<p>About a few months ago, I settled on majoring in CS and perhaps math (at least minor in math), and I will be declaring my major next Tuesday (at least I plan to :D). I really like CS, especially with how my research project (UROP) is going. </p>
<p>The problem is that I have to take EECS 203. I've heard from MANY people about how bad/hard the class is, so naturally, I'm concerned. I tried talking to my GSI (Mendava) about the class, but she wouldn't tell me how the exams are structured and said that they were not allowed to pass out old or practice exams. She only said to do homework and go to lecture and discussion (duh, any one would know that is good for you). </p>
<p>I've started doing extra problems out of the book and reading out of the book before lecture, which seems to help immensely because the profs (Shi and Hayes) lecture the material as if you already know it ... well, truth tables were taught in high school, but still ... I'm freaking out because I know there are quite a few people who have taken MATH 295 (and were good in it) and I'll be screwed over because of that.</p>
<p>Any suggestions or advice on succeeding in EECS 203? Anything is much appreciated, so thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Find a good homework group, this is what saved my grade. This was the first C I have ever received in my life, and without getting almost 100% on every homework I would’ve failed the class.</p>
<p>My first exam was well below average, second exam I did average, and the final I was below average. It’s definitely not hard to do better than a C, but you’re gonna’ have to put time in. I was pledging and probably put an hour in a week to read the book, and I never went to discussion and hardly to lecture.</p>
<p>Make sure you learn the really important stuff like best-case, worst-case, average-case complexities and some of the different theorems and algorithms because they carry on into 281 and later classes. The predicate calculus stuff is complete BS…</p>
<p>I’m also taking EECS 203. A couple of seniors told me to learn how to do math-rigorous proofs since most of 203 is based of proofs. Also, memorize all the definitions as soon as possible, so you’re not overwhelmed at the end.</p>
<p>It’s really not that bad of a class, but it requires a lot of work on your own to do well. My suggestions are:</p>
<p>1.) Find a good homework group (it may be a little late for this)
2.) Do lots of practice problems to make sure you know the material inside and out
3.) Get good at proofs</p>
<p>The MIT OCW’s “Mathematics for Computer Science” is really similar to our class, they use the same book and it is organized in a similar fashion, however, they have are more proof-based (from the first few notes). Unfortunately, they don’t have video lectures…unless I couldn’t find it…</p>
<p>The book is pretty good, in my opinion, it’s clear and concise.</p>
<p>As for the lectures, the topics of the first few lectures are similar, however, they converge drastically in later lectures. Also, our class is a faster, so the IIT ones were a bit boring compared to Shi’s lectures.</p>
<p>Has anyone gotten back grades for homework 1 for EECS 203? The grades are posted on CTools. It sucks, because everyone I’ve talked to has NOT gotten an A. It’s like they bell curved us or something. </p>
<p>Now I’m worried because I should have spent more time doing Homework 2 and giving better explanations.</p>