Combinatorics (Math 184, Spring 2015)

Instructor: Igor Pak
See email instructions below.

Class schedule: MWF 1:00 - 1:50, MS 5147
Discussion: Tu 1:00 - 1:50, MS 5147

Office Hours: M 3-4 pm, MS 6125 or by appointment.

Teaching Assistant: Danny Nguyen (anuindale AT gmail DOT com)
TA Office Hours: Tu, Th 11-11:50 am, MS 3921

Textbooks: Miklos Bona, A Walk Through Combinatorics: An Introduction to Enumeration and Graph Theory (MB), World Scientific, Third Edition
(see the Amazon page)

Additional reading will be posted on this page if necessary.

Grading: Homeworks: 20%, Midterm: 20%, Final: 60%.

Difficulty: This is an advanced undergraduate course in Enumerative Combinatorics and it Application. The students are expected to learn the theory and solve problems on the homeworks. The exams and especially the homeworks will be challenging and require problem solving abilities.

Other expectations: I would guess that the average student should spend about 8-10 hours per week outside of class to get a decent grade. Much of this time should be spent on the homeworks, but some should be spent on reading the book and absorbing the class material.

Content

We will cover selected book sections concentrating on Enumerative Combinatorics portions of the book, including covering some exercises (given in the book with solutions). Although much of the material will follow the textbook, I will change the style and level of presentation, as well as the order of sections. Some additional material will be presented in class, so class participation is very important. More specific info on the order of sections will be posted soon.

Additional Reading

Victor Kac, Pokman Cheung, Quantum Calculus, Section 5-7 (for now); link here.
Richard Stanley, Enumerative Combinatorics, Vol. 1, Sections 1.3 (lnversions subsection), 1.7 (for now); link here.

Home Assignments

The weekly home assignments will be given on Fridays to be returned also on Fridays. Worst HA will be dropped from the final score. The assignments will be posted here (on the course web page) in .pdf format. Unless announced otherwise, you need to return them in writing right before the Wed class. No late assignments will be accepted.

HA1 is here, due Mon April 13, 2015.
HA2 is here, due Fri April 24, 2015.
HA3 is here, due Fri June 8, 2015.

Midterm and Final Exams

Final: June 8, 2015, 11:30 am - 2:30 pm.

Collaboration Policy

For the homeworks, you can form discussion groups of up to 4 people each. In fact, I would like to encourage you to do that. You can discuss problems but have to write your own separate solutions. You should write the list of people in you group on top of each HW.

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Last updated 4/4/2015