[Ownaginatios]

Software Engineering 2DM3 is an introductory course to the fundamentals of discrete mathematics. It's a first semester course, and is only taken by software engineers.

The course first starts off simple (in the textbook) with the notation of discrete mathematics (i.e. ^ for and, \/ for or .etc). It then moves on to some basic axioms (i.e. if Q is a boolean value, then Q \/ NOT Q => TRUE). From these, you can solve simple word problems.

After that, it progresses on to set theory, mathematical induction, probability and graphs (particularly trees). Big-O notation is also briefly covered at some point as well.

The course breakdown is as follows:

Assignments 30% (10% each)
Midterm 30%
Final 40%

The assignments were usually around 5-8 questions each and tended to required quite a bit of thinking to figure out. Most (if not all) the solutions can be found on the Internet since the textbook is used heavily worldwide. They can be done at the last minute, but it's painful to do so (expect an all-nighter if you want a good mark).

The midterm isn't too bad either; it's very similar to the previous ones posted. If you do the assignments and the previous midterms, you can do quite well.

The exam I personally found very hard, but I didn't thoroughly understand a lot of the material to be honest ( I sacrificed studying much for this in favor of studying for a math exam). Many of my colleagues found it very easy.

The content overlaps slightly with SFWR ENG 2C03 with Big-O notation and probability... nothing major though.

This course is typically taught by Antoine Deza. It takes a while to get used to his thick French accent, but he's actually a really cool guy. Unfortunately, I can't really say the same for his teaching style.

I found that it was really hard to follow what we should be learning. Dr. Deza didn't really have any notes and kind of just jumped around. He would also spend many classes pretty much having a discussion with only one student on a problem they were having, which was useless to everyone else. So to learn in this class, I had to rely on the book... which wasn't great because the book is very long (up to 50 pages for a single chapter). It was exhausting to get through it.

I got an 11 in the course (which is kind of funny because I feel like I didn't really learn anything).

Overall, I think you'll either love or hate this course. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I were given some concise power point slides or something to learn from. You'll do okay regardless though; I've yet to find someone who got less than a 7.

Good luck!