david@spec0.ee.man.ac.uk (David Tait) (02/14/91)
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Those that decide such things in my department (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) have included a course on "Software Engineering". It is intended for 2nd year students and attempts to instil some awareness of software design methodology. The only prerequisite at present is a course on Pascal. However, we felt it would be a Good Thing if some of the language of formal methods was encountered at an early stage, and therefore potential students were asked to go to lectures on Discrete Maths in their 1st year. These covered: Propositional Logic; Predicate Logic; Sets; Relations; Functions. The Discrete Maths course already existed, and was given by a Maths lecturer to an audience of mainly Maths and Computer Science undergrads. Unfortunately these lectures didn't go down too well with our engineering students, and they questioned the relevance of the material. This prompted a re-think on our part. Which brings me to the point of this posting. We still feel that a short course (say 10 hours) on Discrete Maths would be useful, but we will teach it ourselves. I would like to canvas opinion on how to make such a course stimulating for EE students. (I think I've got enough ideas on how to make it boring :-). Apart from introducing some of the elementary concepts of formal methods, we have no limitations on what we *must* include. Any ideas would be most welcome. If you've written a book on "Discrete Maths for Electrical Engineering", let me know! Many thanks. David ----- David Tait, Electrical Engineering Dept, The University, Manchester M13 9PL. david@spec0.ee.man.ac.uk Note: In the US please read Math for Maths ;-)