Instructor : David Boyd
| Office: 200 Mathematics |
| Office hours: Mon 1:30-2:30 and Weds 1:30-2:30
or by appointment |
| Phone: 604-822-4457 |
| e-mail: boyd at math dot ubc dot ca |
| URL of this web page: http://www.math.ubc.ca/~boyd/math331/ |
Final Exam Cancelled:
| The final examination which had been scheduled for Wednesday,
April 20, 3:30--6:00 PM, MATH 102 has now been cancelled. The final
mark will be based on the performance on the best 5 out of the 6
assignments.
|
Textbook:
| Herbert S. Wilf, generatingfunctionology |
| This text is out of print but due to the generosity of the author and the
publisher it can be downloaded free from
Herb Wilf's web site. |
Other useful books:
| R. L. Graham, D.E. Knuth & O. Patashnik,
Concrete Mathematics |
| This book has been used previously as a text for the course.
It is much more extensive than our chosen text and has a very large
selection of further problems and advice on solving them.
|
| G. Polya, How to Solve it |
| This is a classic text on the art of problem solving.
It provides inspiration and good advice if you are having difficulties
finding the solution of a problem or the proof of a theorem.
Here are a couple of pages
scanned from my copy. |
Course description:
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The course is intended for honours students.
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| This year the intention
is to work through the book generatingfunctionology by Herb Wilf
which is an introduction to generating functions and their applications
to solving combinatorial enumeration problems.
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|
The main focus of the course will be the solution of problems from the
text and other sources. Students will be expected to present their
solutions to some of the problems in class.
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The background for the course is an honours sequence in calculus and
linear algebra.
|
| The text also develops uses some of the elementary theory
of power series considered as functions of a complex variable. This
is mainly needed in the final chapter, on asymptotics, and is the
most natural approach to such questions. We will also consider some
more elementary approaches to some of these questions as time permits.
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| |
| Prerequisites
MATH 120 (MATH 121 or
MATH 100/101), MATH 223 (or MATH 221), MATH 226 (or MATH 200)
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Marking:
| There will be regular homework assignments which will be
assigned at regular intervals. Be sure to do these and hand them on on time! |
| You are encouraged to try as many of the problems in the text
as you can, in addition to those assigned. |
| You may discuss the problems with the other students in the class
but your submitted solutions must be written by you in your own words. |
|
The final mark will be based on the marks on the best 5 out of the 6
assignments.
|
Assignments and Supplementary course material:
| There will be no paper
handouts in class. Any such material will be linked to this web
page and be in pdf format. To read pdf you need Adobe's free
acrobat reader.
|
| Assignment #1, due Friday, January 14 |
A solution from #1 |
| Assignment #2, due Friday, January 28 |
| Assignment #3, due Friday, February 11 |
| Assignment #4, due Friday, March 4 |
| Assignment #5, due Friday, March 18 |
| Assignment #6, due Monday, April 4 |
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