Which Courses You Should Have Completed
To enroll in this course, you must have successfully completed:
- COMP SCI 1200 (with a grade of C or better)
- COMP SCI 1575 (with a grade of C or better)
- Either MATH 1208 or MATH 1214 (with a grade of C or better), or be currently enrolled in one of them
What You Should Already Know
To succeed in CS 2500, you should have a solid foundation in:
- Discrete Mathematics (including logic, set theory, and graph theory)
- Data Structures (such as recursion, hash tables, and graph structures)
- Calculus fundamentals
We will move quickly into topics like asymptotic analysis, recurrence relations, and mathematical induction, so it’s important that you’re comfortable with these ideas. If you’ve taken the required courses, you’ve likely encountered most of this before — but we will go deeper and move faster.
If you feel rusty, now is the time to review. A strong foundation will make the course much smoother for you.
Download refresher notes I have prepared here.
Important Note About Prerequisites
This course assumes you already know the prerequisite material. While we will briefly revisit certain concepts when needed, we will not spend significant class time reteaching foundational topics.
- It is your responsibility to ensure you are prepared
- If you’re struggling with background material, you are expected to seek help proactively
- Office hours are intended for questions on current course content, not for reviewing entire prerequisite subjects
Take the time to brush up early — it will pay off throughout the semester!