CS103: Mathematical Foundations of Computing

🗺️ Your Week 7 Task Map

⏰ Deadlines

• (Mon Nov. 3, 6:00 PM) Deadline for Midterm 1 regrade requests.
• (Tue Nov. 4, 1:00 PM) Deadline to invoke the Regret Clause for Problem Set 5.
• (Fri Nov. 7, 1:00 PM) Deadline for Problem Set 6.

📚 Optional (but Enormously Helpful) Readings

• We have released several guides this week. It's worth looking through each of these to ensure you're set up for success on your problem sets and prepared for any questions that might arise about these topics on the final exam.

  • (Fri Oct. 31) Guide to the Subset Construction
  • (Mon Nov. 3) Guide to Regular Expressions
  • (Mon Nov. 3) Guide to State Elimination
  • (Wed Nov. 5) Guide to the Myhill-Nerode Theorem
  • (Fri Nov. 7) Guide to CFGs (unlocks Friday)

📰 Other Updates

• Last week, we published a trove of practice exam problems. See the “Exams” pull-down menu at the top of this page. We have also released Midterm 2 exam logistics.

• Seating assignments will be posted sometime Wednesday evening (Nov. 5).

• Midterm 2 is next Monday, Nov. 10, from 7-10 PM.

Course Overview and Welcome

Hi there 👋, and welcome to CS103: Mathematical Foundations of Computing! This class is an introduction to discrete mathematics (mathematical logic, proofs, and discrete structures such as sets, functions, and graphs), computability theory, and complexity theory. Over the course of the quarter, you’ll see some of the most impressive – and intellectually beautiful – mathematical results of the last 150 years. As we go, you’ll hone your ability to write clean, elegant, well-structured proofs. You’ll untangle interesting puzzles and encounter surprising mathematical results. In the latter half of the course, you’ll learn how to think about computation itself, how to show that certain problems are impossible to solve, and you’ll get a sense of what lies beyond the current frontier of computer science – especially with respect to the biggest open problem in math and computer science, the P = NP problem.

We’re excited to share our love of this material with you, and we have a superb team of TAs who will support you on your journey through this course. We hope you will ultimately find the class enriching and fulfilling and that you enjoy the fascinating topics we discuss along the way!

Teaching Team