Course Information
Course Description
Permutations and combinations, counting principles, recurrence relations and generating functions, combinatorial designs, graphs and trees, with applications including games of complete information. Combinatorial existence theorems, Ramsey theorem. Prerequisites: 32B, 33B.
For the departmental catalog entry for this course, including a tentitive schedule, check here.
Texts
- Official Textbook
-
Times and Places
Here.
People
Visit the homepage of the people below to find out their information and times of office hours.
- Instructor -
Oren Louidor
Please note 1: All email inquiries concerning this course
must have their subject line contain the word "Math 180". Otherwise, they
will not be
caught by the email forwarding system and not reach the instructor.
Please note 2: Oren Louidor will not respond to inquiries made via Virtual Office Hours.
However, you are welcome to use it as an intercommunication arena among you.
-
TA - Anush Tserunyan,
- Evaluation Policy
Homework
-
- In general - There will be weekly homework assignments. Problems will be taken from the book or
other sources. It is vital that you do the homework as, in general in mathematical courses, understanding is achieved via practicing.
Moreover, many problems in the midterms and the final will be similar to homework problems.
- Justify your solution - The final answers to most problems will be provided so that you could verify that your answer is correct.
This is yet another reason for you to thoroughly justify your solution. Correct final answers with wrong or not enough justification will
be scored poorly.
- Group work -
Group work is allowed, but is limited to 4 people per group and you must explicitly write on the first page of the homework, the
names of the people in your group. Identical works of students who are not explicitly stated to belong to the same work group
will all be disqualified and receive a grade of 0.
- Homework cycle -
Homework problems will be assigned on Wednesday and will cover the material taught during that week, that is the
last 6 lectures. You must hand in your HW on the following
Tuesday (that is you have the remaining of the week past
Wednesday and the weekend to work on them). They will be returned the following week, during recitations.
- Submission guidelines -
Attach this cover page as the first page of each submitted homework assignment. Please staple.
- Examinations
-
- In general -
All examinations in this course are closed book. No notes and accessories (e.g. calculators) will be allowed.
- Midterm -
There will be one 2 hours in class midterm. See course schedule for the precise time.
- Final -
The final examination will be a two hours long and will take place on the last Thursday of the course, during
the discussion session time.
The final will cover all material in the course. See course schedule for the precise time
of the final.
- Grades
-
- Ranges -
Homework grades will be between 0 and 10. All exam grades will be between 0 and 100.
- Dropping of lowest grades -
The lowest homework grade will be dropped when calculating the average homework grade.
- Final numeric grade -
Your final numeric grade is calculated as the maximum between your final exam grade and the weighted
average of your final exam grade, the midterm grade and the average homework grade (scaled to 0 to 100).
That is, your final numeric grade is determined as:
max {F, 0.5F + 0.4M + 0.1H}
where F=Final exam, M=Midterm, H=Average HW grade (after dropping lowest score).
- Final letter grade -
The numeric cut-offs for determining the final letter grade from the final numeric grade will be defined according to the performance of the class.
The general policy is that the top 25% will get an A grade (A+/A/A-),the next 30% will get a B grade (B+/B/B-). The remaining students who
will have above 50 as their final numeric grade will be given a C grade (C+/C/C-). All the rest will get a D or an F.
Note that this is just a guideline and the final conversion policy may be modified to make sure that the grades accurately portray
the performance of the students relative to what is expected in the course.
Also note that for the same reason, there are no posted guidelines as to the division to X+/X/X- in each grade group X.
- Posting - Grades will be accessible via MyUCLA.
Makeup\alternate exams and late homework submission
-
- Homework -
No late homework submission will be allowed.
- Midterms -
No make-up midterm will be offered, in the case of absence, your final grade will be determined as 100% the final.
- Final -
Alternate time will be given only in cases were religious circumstances prevent the student from taking the exam in its original date.
Contact the lecturer during the first week of classes if this is the case. Not showing up for the final exam results in an automatic F,
unless under well justified and unpredictable circumstances (e.g. sickness) and only if student has completed with passing grades all homework assignments and the
midterms - all in accordance with university and departmental policy. In the latter case, an I (incomplete) will be given.
-
Appeals
-
- In general -
You may only appeal on correctness, not on the amount of partial credit you think you deserve.
- Midterm -
The midterm will be returned in recitations. A randomly chosen sample of the works will be photocopied and kept with the staff of the course
(to make sure no sudden changes mysteriously appear). Appeals must be submitted to the instructor within one week after the midterm is returned,
in person during office hours.
- Final -
The final exams are not returned. You may come to my office to view your final (I will announce a specific time for that).
Appeals must be submitted to the instructor within two weeks of receiving your grade, in writing, i.e. via email.
Additional Help
The following is a list of tutoring resources available for students (although, I'm not sure about availbility during the summer).
-
Student Math Center (SMC) -
Departmental tutoring service. Group study and tutorials for lower division math courses on a drop-in bases.
-
Covell Math/Science Tutorials -
University tutoring service. Weekly tutorial group meetings and drop-in service. Note: Online registration is required for weekly sessions and seem to get full very quickly.
-
Private Tutors -
The math department maintains a list of graduate students who are available for hire as students.
-
Practice Resources
Textbooks
-
(Note that by no means buying any of these books is required and no HW or exam problems will be taken from there.
These additional texts are provided to respond to the request of students for additional sources for practice problems).
- Exams from previous quarters
-
See exams section.