CMPSCI 291b: Reasoning About Uncertainty

David Mix Barrington

Spring, 2008

This is the home page for CMPSCI 291b. CMPSCI 291b is a trial offering of a proposed undergraduate core course for the new computer science curriculum. It will deal with counting, probability, probabilistic reasoning, and Markov processes. For students in the current computer science major, CMPSCI 291b may be used to fill the "math elective" requirement.

Instructor Contact Info: David Mix Barrington, 210 CMPSCI building, 545-4329, office hours Monday 1:30-2:30, Tuesday 11-12, Wednesday 2:30-3:30, Thursday 1-2. I generally answer my email fairly reliably.

TA Contact Info: Vimal Mathew, vml@cs.umass.edu, 5-1596. Office hours in LGRT 220, days and time TBA.

The course is primarily intended for undergraduates in computer science and related majors such as mathematics or computer engineering. The main prerequisites are CMPSCI 187 (data structures) and MATH 132 (the second semester of calculus).

There is no textbook for the course. For the first half of the course we will use draft versions of my discrete math textbook, which I will copy and distribute. For the second half, I will have lecture notes available on this site where appropriate.

The course will meet for three lecture meetings a week, MWF 9:05-9:55 in room 140 of the computer science building, and one discussion meeting per week, Fridays 10:10-11:00 in the same room. (This is a change from the schedule originally on SPIRE.) I will record attendance, as part of the course grade will be based on class participation. If you have a legitimate excuse to miss a class, please email me, beforehand if possible.

There will be one midterm (using both class sessions on Friday 14 March) and a final, and about four graded homework assignments. There will be programming projects illustrating the principles of the course, and these will be carried out as group work with the entire class constituting the group. The main focus of the discussion sessions will be design meetings for these projects.

Announcements (12 May 2008):

Last modified 12 May 2008