Motivation

This course has three goals

• Learn how to read and write proofs and formal mathematical notation
• Survey a variety of useful mathematical topics, showing relationships to practical applications
• Introduction to theoretical computer science

Most of you are taking this course because it's required by the CS major, the ECE major, or the CS minor. There's three main reasons for making you take it

• To prepare you for CS 225 (e.g. analyzing running time of algorithms) and CS 374 (which expects you to be able to do proofs).
• You might go into theory. That's very few of you, but we don't know who you are yet. And you might not know either.
• You'll probably have theory folks on your team and/or need to use theory reference books

Everyone can do proofs. It's only the tricky parts of tricky proofs that require special talent.