An uninflatable polyhedron |
· Course Announcement · Schedule · Homeworks · Project Proposals · Administrivia ·
Administrivia
- UI Direct call number: 43808
- Credit: 4 hours
- Prerequisite: CS 473G or equivalent, or my permission. Basic courses in probability, linear algebra, and graph theory are also strongly recommended. Mathematically/algorithmically mature undergraduates are welcome!!
- Recommended textbook: Mark de Berg, Marc van Kreveld, Mark Overmars, and Otfried Schwarzkopf. Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications. Springer-Verlag, 2nd edition, 2000. Available from Amazon and elsewhere. The first edition is fine. Lecture notes and research papers will also be distributed on the course web site.
- Coursework: Grades will be based on sporadic homeworks, scribe notes, and a semester project. There will be no exams.
- Homework: There will be a written homework assignment every 2-3 weeks. I don't expect everyone to solve everything completely, but you should turn in at least a partial solution for each problem. Each homework will include at least one problem I don't know how to solve (which may or may not mean that the problem is unsolved).
Homework should be typeset in LaTeX and submitted in PostScript or PDF by email, as either a MIME attachment or a URL, although I will also grudgingly accept hardcopy printed or handwritten submissions.
- Scribe notes: Each student is responsible for latexing scribe notes for at least two (preferably consecutive) lectures, each due one week after the lecture itself. Here are a scribe notes latex package and some nonsense notes to get you started. I'll distribute the scribe notes exactly as they are submitted.
Since this is a geometry class, the scribe notes should contain lots of figures. I recommend idraw or Adobe Illustrator to generate PostScript images; if you don't have those, tgif and xfig are acceptable (but clunky) alternatives. For weirdos who like to describe their pictures instead of just drawing them, I recommend MetaPost or pstricks. If all else fails, draw it by hand and use a scanner.
- Project:
- Either a survey paper, a programming project, or (my favorite) original research. Details TBA.
I talk in pictures not in words.I have no arguments to offer, my figures are my proofs.
Laugh away these truths and facts if you can.- Theodore Heisel
The Circle Squared Beyond Refutation (1934)