Lecture notes
COMP11120MathematicalTechniquesfor Computer Science.
- Module
- Computer Science (COMP11120)
- Institution
- The University Of Manchester (UOM)
COMP11120MathematicalTechniquesfor Computer Science.
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COMP11120 Mathematical Techniques forComputer Science
Andrea Schalk
A.Schalk@manchester.ac.uk
7th September 2020
I
,Organizational issues
Structure of the unit
COMP11120 is a 20 credit course unit that is taught over two semesters. You will
receive one mark at the end of the unit, and it is that mark which decides whether
you pass or fail.
You can find electronic copies of these notes in Blackboard 1 , as well as past
exam papers. Lecture podcasts, solutions to exercises and lecture slides (where
they exist) will also be made available there as term progresses. Note that the
electronic version of the notes shows colours, while the printed version is black
and white, and that it has clickable links that allow you to follow references within
the text easily.
When and where
The unit is taught with two lectures and one examples class per week.
Semester 1
Please refer to your personal timetable regarding the time and location of lectures.
For the examples classes you are split into four lab groups. Which group you
are in is determined by the letter part of the name of your tutorial groups. Please
refer to your personal timetable regarding location and timing of your example
classes. In Semester 1, examples classes start in Week 1 and run through to Week 12,
while in Semester 2 they go from Week 2 to Week 11.
Who
This course unit is delivered by a team:
• Andrea Schalk, A.Schalk@manchester.ac.uk (course leader).
• Renate Schmidt, Renate.Schmidt@manchester.ac.uk,
• Clare Dixon, Clare.Dixon@manchester.ac.uk and
Assessment
Overview
The assessment of this course unit2 has the following components:
1
This is the University’s E-learning environment.
2
Please note that this has changed for academic year 20/21.
II
,80% Examination. If possible there will be two invigilated exam, one in January
covering material from Semester 1 and one in May/June covering material
from Semester 2. Otherwise there will be one invigilated exam in May/June
covering the whole year.
20% Coursework. This consists of 1% each for solutions you submit each week for
the exercises on the weekly exercise sheet.
Note that if you have to resit the unit because your original mark is not high
enough to allow you to progress then this reassessment is based on one paper
covering all the material.
Examinations
There usually are written examinations after both, Semester 1 and Semester 2. Note
that this course unit has been substantially revised in recent years and reached its
current format in 2015/16. As a consequence exam papers before that year do not
accurately reflect the kind of paper you will sit. The exams are based mostly on
questions which are similar to the core questions from the examples classes, with
a few marks (at most 20%) available for questions beyond that.
There are three questions in each paper, one each for the major topics covered
in that semester. This means that in Semester 1 there will be one question each on
• statements and proofs,
• logic and
• probability,
while in Semester 2 there will be one question each on
• recursion and induction,
• relations and
• linear algebra.
Either exam may contain some material from other chapters in the notes that have
been covered to date. Note in particular that notions that were taught in Semester 1
may appear in the paper for Semester 2 (so a question on relations could involve,
say, complex numbers). The assessed exercises, in particular the core ones, are
good examples of the kind of thing you may be asked to do in an exam.
Mid-term test
In the past there has been an invigilated mid-term test in early November. This
will not take place this year.
Exercise sheets
For each examples classes you are told to prepare a number of exercises (typically
five exercises per week, see the sheets at the end of the notes). In some cases you
have a choice regarding which part of an exercise you want to solve. This is to
ensure that students who have seen similar material before still have something
interesting to do. Whenever there is a choice all the parts of an exercise are
III
, concerned with the same abstract property, so no matter which ones you do you
will familiarize yourself with that property. The exercises typically are about
looking at a particular concept or technique.
There are two kinds of exercises on the sheets:
• Core. These belong to the core of the taught material, and there are typically
three such exercises each week. They are labelled CExercise in the notes.
• Extensional. These questions extend the core material and they are labelled
EExercise in the notes.3
If you are stuck on one exercise for ten minutes without making progress then
move on to the next one—different exercises do not usually depend on each other.
Also note that the different parts to each exercise are not necessarily in rising order
of difficulty, and do not necessarily depend on each other.
The point of the examples classes are
• to give you feedback on whether you have understood the material and
answered the exercises correctly at the right level of detail, and
• to help you with exercises you had difficulties solving, concentrating on the
core exercises.
The feedback as well as the marking is carried out by graduate teaching assist-
ants (GTAs). Please note that we have a limited number of qualified GTAs and you
should use your time with them wisely. Make sure you have questions ready to
ask them, or request that they look at a particular (part of an) exercise.If you need
more help or feedback than a GTA can supply in the available time then note that
there are two academic members of staff in each examples class in Semester 1, and
one in Semester 2, to help with this.
Please note that on this course unit it is not possible to get an extension,
in particular, students registered with DASS cannot have automatic one week
extensions. This is because solutions to the marked exercises are published after
the last examples class in a given week.
You have to submit a pdf with your written solutions on Blackboard by the
given deadline. A GTA will look at it and assign a mark each week, and the
examples class that week is used to give feedback to the group and to go over
aspects of the solution that students struggled with.
The GTA may call on you to explain your solution to the rest of the group, so
please make sure you are prepared to do that. You will be able to share your pdf
with the rest of the group so that you can all look at it together, and your task is
to tell everybody how you came up with your solution. Please note that preparing
for this is part of the deliverable each week and that you may lose mark if you are
unable to do so. For this reason we need you to attend the examples class each
week even if you are happy with your submission.
Your marks will appear in Spot, the department’s system that allows you to get
an overview over your coursework marks. The numbers we use have the following
meaning:
• 0: You have not submitted anything that looks like a credible attempt to
solve the exercises for the week.
3
Exercises named as Exercise do not appear on any sheets and are there to give you more material
to practice on.
IV
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