MAS334 Combinatorics
Lecturer: Neil Strickland
Module information
The official course information page is
here. Notes, problem sheets, solutions,
past papers and so on can be found on this page. There is also a
Blackboard page for the course,
with a discussion board and links for uploading homework.
Exam information
The format of the exam and the arrangements for taking it will
be as in 2020-21. You can find the 2020-21 exam and solutions
below. There will be 7 questions of varying lengths, all
compulsory. Some questions will ask you to state definitions
or results from the notes, or reproduce proofs from the notes.
However, most questions will instead ask you to solve problems,
which will often require some creative modification of the
methods explained in the notes. There is a
separate document with
more details.
Lecture notes
Both versions of the notes contain links to various interactive
demonstrations (described below) and videos.
The HTML version is new. It should be better than the PDF for
viewing on a phone, or for reading with a screen reader. I would
welcome any comments on either of these use cases.
I strongly recommend that you should attend lectures in person if
possible. If you cannot do that, I primarily recommend that you
work from the notes and embedded videos and demonstrations, but
you may also want to look at the
2020-21 lecture recordings. There is also
a lecture progress page where you can see
which sections of the notes have been covered in lectures.
Interactive demonstrations
There is a set of
interactive demonstrations
explaining many of the ideas in the course. I will talk through these
in lectures, there are attached YouTube videos, and you can try them
yourself at other times. These are experimental and under development. I
welcome comments about the extent to which they are comprehensible, useful
or interesting.
Recommended books
The main recommended book is
Aspects of Combinatorics by
Victor Bryant
(
Amazon,
Google Books).
The author taught combinatorics in Sheffield for many years.
Another possibility is
A First Course in Combinatorial
Mathematics by Ian Anderson
(
Amazon,
Google Books).
Homework schedule
In Weeks 1, 3, 5, 8 and 10 there will be
online tests.
These will use the same system that was used for MAS220 and MAS221
last year, so it should be familiar for most students.
In weeks 2, 4, 6, 9 and 11 I will issue offline problem sheets.
Each of these will specify one or two problems that you can
submit via
Blackboard; I will
then mark your work and return it the following week. These problem
sheets, and subsequently the solutions, will appear on this page.
Formal assessment will be based solely on the final exam.
Past exam papers
The 2020-21 and 2021-22 exams were online and open book. However,
for 2021-22 I originally set a normal exam and cut it down at a
late stage when it was decided to move online. The table below
has the original full-length version, as that will be more useful
for revision.
Office hours
Official office hours are 11:00-12:00 on Fridays. I will expect people
to come to my office (Hicks J26) by default, but you can email me to
arrange an online meeting if you prefer. If you find me in my
office at some other time, then I may well be able to talk to you, but
I do not guarantee it.
Contact details
Neil Strickland
N.P.Strickland@sheffield.ac.uk
Hicks Building, Room J26
0114 2223852