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Discrete partnership: a case for a full year of discrete math

Published: 03 March 2006 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Discrete mathematics lies at the heart of the discipline of computing and represents one of the few bodies of knowledge with consistent content in our young and changing curriculum. We offer a model of a full-year, two-course experience of discrete structures with the initial course taught by computer science faculty and the second course taught by faculty in mathematics. We argue for the strengths gained in multiple and repeated exposure to the rich set of core topics and for the initial course to occur in the first year rather than the traditional advice to "take calculus". In particular, we present a model of collaboration with mathematics faculty that provides computer science students with an enriched breadth and depth of exposure while helping small departments to handle the constraints in scheduling.

    References

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    1. Discrete partnership: a case for a full year of discrete math

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      Published In

      cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
      ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 38, Issue 1
      March 2006
      553 pages
      ISSN:0097-8418
      DOI:10.1145/1124706
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      • cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGCSE '06: Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
        March 2006
        612 pages
        ISBN:1595932593
        DOI:10.1145/1121341
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 03 March 2006
      Published in SIGCSE Volume 38, Issue 1

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      Author Tags

      1. CC2001
      2. CC2005
      3. computing curriculum
      4. course models
      5. discrete mathematics
      6. syllabi

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