6.1200J/18.

062J Mathematics for Computer Science Thursday 7th September, 2023

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Z. Abel, B. Chapman, R. Williams revised Friday 1st September, 2023

Course Information

Welcome to 6.1200 (formerly 6.042)! In this course, we’ll teach you some mathematics we
think you’ll find very useful in your study of computer science.
This handout contains basic information about the class, and most of the sections will be
useful throughout the course. The main items to pay attention to NOW are:

• This course will have in-person lectures, 2:30pm–4pm Tu/Th in 26-100, and
in-person recitations on W/F.

• Make sure you are signed up for a recitation through Canvas:

https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/22415
Check that you are satisfied with your recitation time, or feel free to switch
to a different one (via Canvas).

• Make sure you can access the course Piazza and Gradescope pages, using
the navigation links in Canvas. (Piazza may ask you to verify your email
address once.)

• Please note the dates of the 2 evening midterm quizzes: Thursday 5th Octo-
ber, 2023, and Thursday 16th November, 2023. This class will have a cumu-
lative final exam during finals week.

• Please note, and carefully adhere to, the collaboration policy for homework.
2 Course Information

1 Course Website
We will use the Canvas website for announcements, class material, problem sets, and for
the course calendar.
Use Piazza to ask questions about course material or logistics—your Piazza posts may be
either public (visible to everyone, and signed with your name), public but anonymous
(visible to everyone, but only staff can see your name), or private (only staff can see your
post and name).
We will use Gradescope to submit and grade assignments.
Both Piazza and Gradescope are available through the navigation links on the left of our
Canvas site, and neither require additional logins.

2 Staff
The lecturers for this course are Zachary Abel, Brynmor Chapman, and Ryan Williams.
Please see the course website for names and contact information of our teaching assis-
tants. Here are our recommended methods to contact course staff:

• Questions about course content or general logistics: Piazza. (All staff will see it,
maximizing your chance for a quick response.)

• Questions about your individual standing, grade, etc.: Please email your TA.

• Personal questions (e.g. accommodations, emergencies, and so on): email us at

61200-issues@mit.edu. Only instructors and our Head TA will see your mes-
sage, and we will proceed with discretion.

Our policies regarding problem sets and exams are clearly outlined in this handout. If a
situation arises that is not addressed in this handout, please reach out as above.

3 Prerequisites
The only prerequisite is 18.01. If you have already taken 18.200 or 6.1220 (formerly 6.046),
then you probably should not take 6.1200.

4 Lectures, Warm-Ups, and Recitations

Lectures are in-person in 26-100, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each lecture is accom-
panied by suggested reading in the (free!) course textbook, which reinforces the same
Course Information 3

material with a different presentation. We will record lectures and post the videos on our
Canvas website. These recordings should be available shortly after lecture ends.
Warm-Ups: Answer the quick multiple-choice Warm-Up questions on Canvas before
each recitation. These are meant as a brief guided review of lecture material, so you
are ready to begin solving group problems and asking informed questions at the begin-
ning of each recitation. Canvas provides instant feedback on your answers, and you may
submit as many times as you’d like before the deadline.
Recitations on Wednesdays and Fridays focus on in-person problem solving in small
groups of 3 to 5 students each, with TA supervision. Problems will be provided in PDF
form, so it is best if at least one student in your group has a laptop or similar viewing
device. If this is not possible or inconvenient, please let us know!
We also plan to host one or two recitation slots remotely instead of in-person, for two
reasons:

• If you are occasionally unable to attend your in-person recitation (for health or
travel, e.g.), but would still like to participate that day, you have the option to attend
a remote recitation instead (earning full participation credit). This is meant as a con-
venience, not a requirement — we will honor S3 recommendations for attendance
exemptions as usual.

• If you would like to be assigned to a remote recitation permanently (for any reason),
contact us at 61200-issues@mit.edu.

10% of your overall grade is based on recitation participation, and another 5% is based on
the Warm-Up questions (see Section 9).

5 Problem Sets
Weekly problem sets will be released on Tuesdays and will be due the following Monday
night at 11:59pm, with a few exceptions detailed in the course calendar on Canvas. There
are 11 problem sets in total.
Be neat! Your solutions should be both clear and concise. A correct solution may not re-
ceive credit if we cannot decipher it! If you don’t know the full solution to a problem, you
may write a partial solution for partial credit, but please do not include extraneous infor-
mation. Examples of extraneous information that may lose you credit include multiple
solutions to the same problem, or walls of text with out-of-context buzzwords.
Late Homework: Late problem sets may be submitted for partial credit. For the first
50 hours after the due date, partial credit decreases by 1% each hour (rounded up). For
example, submitting 90 minutes late will round up to 2 hours, and you will still earn 98%
of your points. Problem sets submitted more than 50 hours late (all the way until the last
day of classes!) still earn 50% credit. To reiterate: late problem sets can be submitted any
4 Course Information

time during the semester for half credit. If submitting a late problem set after solutions
have been posted, you may consult the solutions but we expect you to treat them like
any other collaborator: they can help you understand the problem, but you should not
consult them while completing your own writeup; your solution must use your own words
and reflect your own understanding of the problem (see Section 10). Late homework
that is clearly copied from the solutions handout will not receive credit and may incur
disciplinary actions, as would any other form of plagiarism.
Uploading Submissions: Solutions to all parts of the problem set should be submitted to
Gradescope in a single PDF file. Before submitting, check that all of your work is included
in the PDF file, and be sure to tell Gradescope which pages contain which problems, so
our graders can find your solutions. If your submission does not clearly indicate which
parts the solutions refer to, or has parts missing, it is assumed that you did not attempt
that part of the problem.
While we allow (scanned) handwritten submissions, we STRONGLY suggest you use
LATEX — we have provided a LATEX template and a guide to getting started with LATEX on
Canvas. We are happy to answer LATEX questions on Piazza.
Mandatory Collaboration Statement: Start each question on a new page and mark the
top of the page with the following: (1) your name, (2) the question number, (3) the names
of any people you worked with on the problem other than course staff (see Section 10),
or “Collaborators: none” if you solved the problem entirely by yourself, and (4) all writ-
ten sources that you consulted, other than the text and course handouts. Questions not
accompanied by a collaboration statement will not receive credit.
Regrade Requests: If you feel your problem set was not graded properly, please submit
a regrade request through Gradescope within one week of the graded assignment being
returned. Please note the following before submitting a regrade request:

1. You should carefully read the posted solutions for the problem in question.

2. Indicate which rubric items you deserve (if applicable), where in your solution
write-up you address them, and explain why you deserve extra points. Any re-
grades without justification will not be processed.

3. The course staff reserves the right to regrade the entire assignment, and your grade
may increase or decrease as a result of a regrade.

If you’re not sure why you lost points (after studying the released solutions) but also aren’t
confident that a grading error was made, feel free to ask in a private Piazza post.

6 Office Hours
We will offer regularly-scheduled office hours each week—some in-person, and some
online using Comingle. Office hours are staffed by TAs and instructors, and the times and
Course Information 5

locations (classrooms or Comingle links) will be indicated on the Canvas calendar each
week. Instructors and TAs are also available for individual office hours, by appointment.

7 Textbook
The text for this course is Mathematics for Computer Science. A draft copy is available
on the course website, and readings will be clearly labelled. In addition, when necessary,
we will post additional reference material or links through Canvas.

8 Exams
Quiz 1 Thursday 5th October, 2023, 7:30pm–9:30pm
Quiz 2 Thursday 16th November, 2023, 7:30pm–9:30pm
Final Exam Finals Week, TBD

There will be two in-person 120-minute quizzes at the above times, and a 180-minute final
exam during Exam Week.
Quiz completion is mandatory. Legitimate conflicts due to extenuating circumstances
can be discussed with the course staff. If a student misses a quiz due to an emergency,
a note from the Deans’ Office (S3: https://studentlife.mit.edu/s3) will be re-
quired before arranging a makeup.

The quizzes and final will all be closed book. However, you will be allowed to bring
one single-sided, letter-sized sheet of paper with your own notes for Quiz 1, two sides for
Quiz 2, and three sides for the Final. These should not be necessary but might be helpful.

Regrade requests. As with problem sets, any student who feels that an exam was not
graded properly may submit a regrade request via Gradescope by the announced dead-
line. The request should include a detailed explanation of why they believe that a regrade
is warranted. The course staff reserves the right to regrade the entire exam.

9 Grading Policy
We compute a percentage score based on your coursework and then assign a letter grade
according to the following guideline:

A 88.0 – 100%
B 75.0 – 87.9%
C 60.0 – 74.9%
D 50.0 – 59.9%
F below 50%
6 Course Information

We may lower these thresholds (in the students’ favor!) to adhere to MIT’s letter grade
guidelines (http://catalog.mit.edu/mit/procedures/academic-performance-grades/#gradestext). Your
percentage score is the weighted average of your scores in four areas:

• Problem Sets (35%). We don’t drop any problem sets, but late problem sets can be
submitted until the last day of classes for partial credit.

• Recitation Warm-Up Questions (5%). We drop your 3 lowest scores.

• Recitation (10%). Each recitation earns you a score of 0, 1, or 2 points. If you attend
for the full period and work constructively with your team, then you get 2 points. If
you miss a significant part of the recitation or glaringly fail to work constructively
with your team, then you get 1 point. If you are absent, you get 0 points. We drop
your 3 lowest recitation scores.

• Quiz 1 (15%), Quiz 2 (20%), Final Exam (25%). If the class median on an exam is
below 70%, then we assume the exam was too hard, and adjust all scores upward so
that the median is 70%. We normalize by adding a fixed number of points to every
score, and scores are not capped at 100%. If the median on an exam is above 70% —
fantastic! No adjustment necessary.

The weights listed above total 110%; we’ll cut the extra 10% off of the weight of your
weakest exam. For example, if Quiz 2 is your lowest of the three exams, we will count it
as 10% instead of 20%.

10 Collaboration Policy
The purpose of this collaboration policy is to ensure that students have the ability to
seek sufficient collaboration and help when actively solving problem sets, but also to
ensure that the resulting writeup reflects the student’s own individual understanding of the
material in their own words. With that said, please approach collaboration on problem
sets with care, and follow the more precise guidelines below.

Solving: We encourage you to collaborate with your peers to solve problem sets in order
to deepen your understanding of the course material. If you find yourself unable to solve
a problem, you can seek help, either by approaching the TAs or lecturers (through Office
Hours or private Piazza posts), or by mutually collaborating in a group of up to 3 or
4 students—larger groups lead to imbalanced participation and learning, and are best
split into subgroups. You should not ask for an explanation from someone who has
independently solved the problem, nor should you offer an explanation to someone who
did not solve with you.
Course Information 7

Writing: Your writeup must be entirely your own. Jointly developing the broad outline
of a solution with peers is encouraged, but translating that into a detailed writeup or proof
must be done individually, in your own words, and you must understand it well enough
that you could explain it to your TA. Additionally, you should not show your writeup
to your peers, and you should not look at others’ writeups. Seeking feedback on your
writing is also encouraged, but only from course staff or external tutors. Copying from
any source (books, bibles, past classes, your friend’s problem set, etc.) is not allowed.
In case you work with other students, make sure that your eventual writeup is not a
verbatim reiteration of your jointly-generated notes, as this would not be considered your
own words. After learning from your collaboration, you should complete your writeup
without directly consulting these shared notes.

Collaboration Statement: If you do collaborate with someone other than the course
staff, or consult materials from outside the course, you must list their name(s) or the
source(s) in the Collaborator section for each applicable problem. If you did not work
with anyone on a problem or find the answer elsewhere, you should write “Collaborators:
None”. Problems not accompanied by a collaboration statement will not receive credit.

Openness: If you have any questions about the collaboration policy, or if you feel that
you may have violated the policy, please talk to one of the course staff. Although the
course staff is obligated to deal with cheating appropriately, we are able to be far more
understanding and lenient if we find out from the transgressors themselves rather than
from a third party or on our own.

Needless to say, no collaboration whatsoever is permitted on exams.

11 Advice and Resources for Effective Learning

Because of the conceptual nature of the material, just attending lectures and recitations
and doing the homework are unlikely to be sufficient for learning all the concepts. Setting
aside time to do the reading and to study your notes from lecture and recitation is
generally necessary to truly learn and internalize the material, and to be able to apply
it in new ways later in the course as well as for the rest of your life.
Collaborate with other students on the homework. Some problems in 6.1200 are tricky
and sharing insights can save you a lot of time.
Homework is essential for learning the material. Rather than thinking of problem sets
as just a requirement, recognize them as an excellent means for learning the material,
and for building upon it. Spread out the time you have to work the problems. Many
people learn best by reading the problems long before they are due, and working on
them over the course of a whole week; they find that their minds make progress working
the problems in the background or during downtime throughout the day. Few people
8 Course Information

do their best learning the night before an assignment is due. Work with others if that is
helpful, but with the goal of learning first and solving the problems second. It is worth
reading the posted homework solutions, even if you received full credit. Often the
clarity of explanation or details of implementation are different from the way you were
thinking about things in ways that can improve your learning.
Attend lectures and read the textbook! The lectures, reinforced by the textbook, will
explain every topic in the course.
Recitation is an integral part of this class and extends the material presented in lecture.
Attend recitation! If you show up on time, stay the whole hour, and work constructively
with teammates, then you’ve got 10% in the bag.
Come prepared to recitation. Recitations allow you to ask questions and discuss the
material in a more intimate environment. Preparation for recitation can pay off in big
dividends. Be sure to study the provided materials (lectures / book chapters) before each
recitation, so you’re ready to start asking informed questions and solve problems upon
arrival. You are certainly not expected to have already mastered the lecture material before
recitation, so long as you’ve watched/read and thought about it. The Warm-Up questions
provide a convenient self-check as you’re preparing. If you complete them consistently,
that’s another easy 5%.
Office hours are an essential means of filling in any gaps in your understanding and over-
coming difficulties you may be having with the problem sets. There is no need to attend
only the office hours of your own recitation instructor; attend whatever office hours are
convenient for you. Preparing for office hours, as with recitation, can make everything
more productive.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help. This class is largely conceptual, and the concepts tend
to build on one another. If you are having trouble understanding the material, it is
important to catch up early rather than risk falling further behind. We can help.
Office hours are a particularly useful mechanism for learning material, finding collabora-
tors, and working through difficulties on problem set assignments with peers and course
staff. Moreover, if you have questions about the course or problem sets, please use Piazza
as opposed to emailing an individual TA or instructor—that will give you a better chance
of getting a speedy response.
Quizzes are typically tough. The best preparation is to do your best on each homework
and go over your mistakes afterward, first by yourself and then, if it’s useful, with a peer
or staff member.
Seriously, please ask for help. If you are having one of those terms and you’re getting
buried by 6.1200, MIT, and life at large, then come talk to us and we’ll see how we can
help you out. Please also reach out to S3, who has this to say:

We know that this is a complicated time and we care about your wellbeing. If
you are dealing with a personal or medical issue that is impacting your ability
to attend class, complete work, or take an exam, you should contact a dean in
Student Support Services (S3). S3 is here to help you. The deans will verify
Course Information 9

your situation, provide you with support, and help you work with your pro-
fessor or instructor to determine next steps. In most circumstances, you will
not be excused from coursework without verification from a dean. Please visit
the S3 website (https://studentlife.mit.edu/s3) for contact informa-
tion and more ways that they can provide support.

Extra tutoring may be obtained from the following two resources.

The MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science provides one-on-
one peer assistance in many basic undergraduate Course VI classes. Tutoring is free.
6.1200 staff can send recommendations to HKN on behalf of students who might benefit
the most from this service; such students will be prioritized in tutor assignment. More
information is available at the tutoring link on the HKN home page: https://hkn.
mit.edu/
Tutoring is also available from the Talented Scholars Resource Room (TSRˆ2) sponsored
by the Office of Minority Education. The tutors are undergraduate and graduate students.
For further information, go to https://ome.mit.edu/tsr2/

12 Problems?
If you have a complaint or an issue that your TA, a private Piazza post, or 61200-issues@
mit.edu cannot address, please contact the instructors directly at zabel@mit.edu,
brynmor@mit.edu, and/or rrw@mit.edu.

This class has great material, so HAVE FUN!