Discrete Mathematics 2
Course Description
Discrete Mathematics 2
Mathematics from high school to university
S1. Introduction to the course
You will learn: about this course: its content and the optimal way of studying it together with the book.
S2. Combinatorics: the art of counting, cont. from DM1
You will learn: a continuation of topics started in DM1 (permutations, variations, combinations; mathematical modelling), some new stuff (some problems left from DM1, counting functions, counting integer solutions to equations, a generalisation of the Inclusion-exclusion principle, counting derangements), and an introduction to some advanced topics (partitions, multinomial coefficients, Stirling numbers, Twelvefold Way); combinatorial problem solving.
S3. Combinatorial (and not only) proofs
You will learn: various types of proofs of binomial identities, including direct proofs, proofs by induction, proofs by telescoping sums, and combinatorial proofs; this topic was already started in DM1, but now you will see more of it.
S4. A very brief introduction to (discrete) probability
You will learn: how Combinatorics can be applied for (discrete) Probability; this is not a formal course in Probability, just a demonstration of applications of some combinatorial methods for computing probabilities of events; some concepts (briefly) covered in the lectures: experiment, outcome, sample space, event, favourable event (all these were already covered in V9, here you get more examples involving coin toss, rolling dice, drawing balls from an urn, and playing poker), combining events (union and intersection of events), mutually exclusive events, complementary events, independent and dependent events, conditional probability, random variable and its expected value (just enough about it to fulfil the promise from V49 and V59).
S5. An introduction to Number Theory
You will learn: divisibility, prime factorisation, finding primes (sieve of Eratosthenes), Euclid's algorithm for multiple purposes (finding the gcd [greatest common divisor] and lcm [least common multiple] of two natural numbers, solving Diophantine equations, and solving linear equations in modular arithmetic [in Section 6]), Euler's totient function, the sum-of-all-divisors formula, number representation in different position systems (decimal, binary, etc), converting numbers from decimal to other bases (and back). This is not a complete course in Number Theory (which is a huge branch of Maths!), just a basic introduction to some of its topics, the ones that are usually a part of DM courses.
S6. Modular arithmetic
You will learn: the basics of modular arithmetic: addition, subtraction, multiplication, raising to a power; properties of modular arithmetic; relation modulo n as an equivalence relation, equivalence classes and their representatives; tests for divisibility (by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16); solving congruences, systems of congruences (with a reference to Chinese Remainder Theorem), linear equations, and systems of linear equations in Z_n for different numbers n; Fermat's Little Theorem with several proofs, one of them really exciting (combinatorial); Euler's Totient Theorem; some earlier problems are revisited and solved with new methods.
S7. An introduction to algebraic structures
You will learn: you will get a glimpse into the wonderful world of Abstract Algebra, the domain of mathematics that studies structures such as groups, rings, fields, vector spaces, etc, their properties and relations between them; basic concepts such like binary operations on sets, their associativity and commutativity, neutral elements and inverse elements with respect to the operations; sets with two operations (rings, fields) and the property that binds these operations (distributivity), additive and multiplicative inverses; the concept of a subgroup; cyclic groups; direct (Cartesian) product of structures; groups of permutations and the geometrical interpretation of some of their subgroups; homomorphisms and isomorphisms between structures; Lagrange's Theorem; various examples and illustrations.
Note: This is the second part of our trilogy in Discrete Mathematics. The following subjects will be covered in the next course: sequences (recurrences, generating functions, etc), an introduction to Graph Theory, chosen applications of Discrete Mathematics.
Make sure that you check with your professor what parts of the course you will need for your final exam. Such things vary from country to country, from university to university, and they can even vary from year to year at the same university.
A detailed description of the content of the course, with all the 222 videos and their titles, and with the texts of all the 412 problems solved during this course, is presented in the resource file
“001 List_of_all_Videos_and_Problems_Discrete_Mathematics_2.pdf”
under Video 1 ("Introduction to the course"). This content is also presented in Video 1.