This page does not represent the most current semester of this course; it is present merely as an archive.
We will meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10:00–10:50, online.
Monday and Wednesday lecture is optional, but strongly encouraged. Friday lecture will often be used for in-class evaluation: some lab-like check-offs of basic understanding with the professor or a TA; some mini exams.
I do not schedule review sessions or the like outside of usual class time.
You will be expected to read instructional material and either understand it or ask questions to clarify what you found confusing. We strongly recommend forming study groups that meet at least weekly all semester long to discuss readings, as even if they appear simple at first they will often contain nuances that will only emerge with conversions.
You will be asked to perform three kinds of evaluations:
At the end of the semester, you will also be able to take a final quiz, which is graded and is intended to help you show increased mastery of topics where you previously failed to show mastery.
| Instructor | TAs | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Luther Tychonievich | Emily Feng, Zachary Heidel, Jack Herd, Abrar Majidi Idrissi, Sarah Meng, Nathaniel Saxe, Annie Zhu |
| Office Hours | Mo 3-4; Tu 10-11; We 11-12; Th 2-3 | see the office hour page |
| Phone | 243-3789 | (none) |
| tychonievich@virginia.edu | use Piazza |
For communication about course content, Piazza is preferred to email. For communication about personal circumstances, email or in-person visits are preferred. If you email, include either DMT1
or 2102
in the subject line to prevent your email from skipping my inbox and never getting read.
Our TAs are students too, with duties and work outside of their TAing. Please do not ask them to act as your TA except at the scheduled on-the-clock times they have listed as their office hours and lab time. They are also kind people; please don’t put them in the position of having to say no or (worse) being nice to you at the expense of their own schooling.
We will primarily use the free online textbook Mathematics for Computer Science by Eric Lehman, Thomson Leighton, and Albert Meyer, available both on our site and on MIT’s site. Readings that begin MCS
refer to sections of that book; for example, MCS 1.7
refers to the section Proof by Cases
.
We will also sometimes refer to the free online textbook forall x Calgary Remix by P D Mangus et al, available both on our site and from the Open Logic Project. Readings that begin ∀x
refer to sections of that book; for example, ∀x 15.1
refers to the section The idea of a formal proof
.
I will use .0
to mean the text before .1
; for example, ∀x 1.0
is the content of chapter 1 preceding section 1.1.
From time to time we will also post links to other articles or writeups of our own.
You will both write and read proofs as part of this class. If you have had a proof-heavy math class before, you know what to expect here. If not, think of proof writing as being more similar to code writing than to other forms of mathematics homework in terms of time needed and difficulty of estimating exact time needed for any given problem.
In February 2019 the CS faculty approved a definition of what we believe grades mean. It is my intent to approximate that definition in this course. As a brief summary,
| Letter | Student demonstrated | Recommendation re future courses1 |
|---|---|---|
| A | mastery of all topics | likely to do well |
| B | competence in significant topics | able to do well with some review |
| C | sufficient competence | likely to be challenging |
| D | minimal competence | unlikely to succeed |
| F | less than minimal competence | retake this course first |
This will be measured in the following way:
Every online quiz question and in-class quiz rubric item will be assigned to one or more of the following four core concepts:
The combined set of items in a concept will be assigned a label from the set {insufficient, competent, mastery}. Initially, mastery will be 90% and competence 75%; we may change those as evaluations are performed and better calibration between graded items and student ability is developed.
Different mixes of scores in different concepts will correspond to different final letter grades as follows:
| Grade | Definition |
|---|---|
| A+ | A, and exceptionally low error rate |
| A | Mastered all four |
| A− | Competent in all, mastered all but numbers |
| B+ | Competent in all, mastered all but structures |
| B | Competent in all, mastered logic and proofs |
| B- | Competent in all, mastered logic and one more |
| C+ | Competent in all, mastered something |
| C | Competent in all |
| C− | Competent in all but one, including logic |
| D+ | Competent in logic and proofs, mastered something |
| D | Competent in logic and proofs |
| D− | (unused) |
| F | Anything else |
Missed evaluations will not be rescheduled, extended, nor made up during the semester.
The final quiz will be an opportunity to show mastery in topics that you failed to show mastery of during the semester, whether because you failed to take the relevant assessments or because you did not perform well on them, and will be separated out by topic so you can take only those topics you wish to. If you do not need such an opportunity (i.e., you have already shown mastery before the final) you will not need to take the final quiz.
UVA does not award credit for placement tests. If you have not shown continuing evidence of engagement and learning throughout the course, the final quiz may not be enough to change that.
Behave professionally.
Never abuse anyone, including the emotional abuse of blaming others for your mistakes. Kindness is more important than correctness.
Let our TAs be students when they are not on the clock as TAs.
I always hope everyone will behave honestly. I know we all are tempted to do what we ought not; if you do something you regret, the sooner you tell me the sooner (and more leniently) we can correct it.
The online quizzes allow consulting many resources. If you consult resources other than course material, you must cite any and every source you consult in the comments of the question. Talked to a friend, saw an interesting video, consulted a website, had a tutor? Tell us!
The online quizzes may not be done in groups or in consultation with any resource that did not exist prior to the quiz being posted.
The in-class quizzes must be done on your own, with not help of any kind.
If I believe you have acted dishonestly, I will communicate this fact to you and propose a penalty. If you have information I lack, please share that with me; I may thereafter change my belief and/or proposed penalty.
If we are not able to come to an agreement, or if the case is particularly egregious and beyond my comfort level handling in-course, we will instead refer the case to the University Honor System and abide by their findings.
If you qualify for accommodations from the SDAC, please let me know, preferably in my office where we can discuss how your accommodations will interplay with the quiz-based nature of this course.
As a religious person myself, I fully support the university’s stance on accommodating religious observances. If such observances or other religious beliefs impact or are likely to impact your work this semester, please let me know as soon as you are aware of this impact.
Bad things happen. People forget things and make mistakes. Bad days coincide with due dates. Etc.
If you believe that circumstances warrant an change in deadline, a second chance, or some other accommodation in order to more accurately synchronize grade with knowledge, come talk to me and we’ll resolve the situation as best we can.
Most of our courses depend on CS 2102 topics in some way. Theory (CS 3102) and Algo (CS 4102) have particularly strong dependencies, as do many of our electives.↩︎