Discrete structures is about basic mathematical structures which are used in computer science. This is one of your ubiquitous Computer Science units that talks about Computer Science stuff.

Topics in this unit

  • Propositional Logic
  • Predicate Logic
  • Sets
  • Relations (partial orderings, equivalence classes, etc)
  • Functions
  • Finite automata
  • Finite state machines
  • Turing Machines (halting problem woohoo)
  • Proofs (lots of these, including weak induction and strong induction)
  • Proofs of correctness for programs

Lecture notes are given out during lectures and are based on the textbook (Gersting, which costs about $200 if you want to buy it!).

Tutorials are assessed based on effort. It's recommended that you do them because no tutorial answers are given out and the exam is based on tutorial like questions. You also need to get a lot of practice to do the questions assigned in the unit well.

Taken by GeorgeMilne and TimFrench. Both lecturers make an effort to make the topic somewhat interesting, but fight a losing battle.

Unit website

Handbook entry


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