Course Content

We will cover the use the book;

Finite Mathematics by H. Rolf, 8th edition, Hybrid edition.

Do Not buy a book until you have read the information in

Book/Access Code Information.

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We will cover the following material in the course :

Chapter 6. Sets and Counting (Sections 6.1- 6.7).
Chapter 7: Probability (7.1-7.6).
Chapter 8: Statistics (8.1-8.7).
Chapter 3: Linear Programming (3.1-3.3).
Chapter 9. Game theory (9.1-9.3).


Chapters 6, 7 and 8 deal with counting, probability and elementary statistics. This starts with an exposition of some useful and efficient techniques of counting. Next we apply these techniques to the calculation of probabilities or the chances of various events occurring. Statistical inference is the final topic, where we make inferences about probabilities on the basis of calculations on a sample taken from the population of interest.


In Chapter 3 we deal with systems of linear equations and optimization problems. An example might be if you wanted to maximize your scores for this course, but had a constraint on the amount of time available to spend on the course. You would then, of course, have to pick and choose in order to use your time to your best advantage. Sometimes such problems can be reduced to graphing some lines and solving systems of equations. This is the content of
Chapter 3.

In Chapter 9, we look at game theory i.e. the mathematics of strategy. If you play a game, you want to maximize your returns, or minimize your losses as the case may be, i.e. you want to play an optimal strategy. We introduce and use matrices as a way of organizing information in game theory and we use probability, expected values and linear programming to find optimal strategies.