12 Project Management Methodologies + How to Choose the Right One
March 31, 2025
Article
Cultivate your career with expert-led programs, job-ready certificates, and 10,000 ways to grow. All for $25/month, billed annually. Save now
This course is part of Introduction to Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science Specialization
Instructors: Владимир Подольский
Instructor ratings
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
46,128 already enrolled
Included with
(861 reviews)
(861 reviews)
Add to your LinkedIn profile
47 assignments
Add this credential to your LinkedIn profile, resume, or CV
Share it on social media and in your performance review
Counting is one of the basic mathematically related tasks we encounter on a day to day basis. The main question here is the following. If we need to count something, can we do anything better than just counting all objects one by one? Do we need to create a list of all phone numbers to ensure that there are enough phone numbers for everyone? Is there a way to tell that our algorithm will run in a reasonable time before implementing and actually running it? All these questions are addressed by a mathematical field called Combinatorics.
In this online course we discuss most standard combinatorial settings that can help to answer questions of this type. We will especially concentrate on developing the ability to distinguish these settings in real life and algorithmic problems. This will help the learner to actually implement new knowledge. Apart from that we will discuss recursive technique for counting that is important for algorithmic implementations. One of the main ‘consumers’ of Combinatorics is Probability Theory. This area is connected with numerous sides of life, on one hand being an important concept in everyday life and on the other hand being an indispensable tool in such modern and important fields as Statistics and Machine Learning. In this course we will concentrate on providing the working knowledge of basics of probability and a good intuition in this area. The practice shows that such an intuition is not easy to develop. In the end of the course we will create a program that successfully plays a tricky and very counterintuitive dice game. As prerequisites we assume only basic math (e.g., we expect you to know what is a square or how to add fractions), basic programming in python (functions, loops, recursion), common sense and curiosity. Our intended audience are all people that work or plan to work in IT, starting from motivated high school students.
Counting is one of the basic mathematically related tasks we encounter on a day to day basis. The main question here is the following: can we count the number of objects without listing all of them? This question arises naturally in various scenarios both in real life and in Computer Science. What is the number of different phone numbers or license plates? What is the number of different combinations one needs to brute force in order to crack a password? Is there a way to tell that an algorithm will run in a reasonable time before implementing and actually running it? All these questions are addressed by a mathematical field called combinatorics. In this module, we consider the basic building blocks of combinatorics. All of them are easy to understand and at the same time are powerful enough to handle various non-trivial questions. To help you to develop an intuition, we consider short Python code snippets for generating the objects to be counted.
13 readings11 assignments
In how many ways one can select a team of five students out of ten students? What is the number of non-negative integers with at most five digits whose digits are decreasing? In how many ways one can get from the bottom left cell to the top right cell of a 5x5 grid, each time going either up or to the right? And why all these three numbers are equal? We'll figure this out in this module!
8 videos4 readings6 assignments
We have already considered most of the standard settings in Combinatorics that allow us to address many counting problems. However, successful application of this knowledge on practice requires considerable experience in this kind of problems. In this module, we will address the final standard setting in our course, combinations with repetitions, and then we will gain some experience by discussing various problems in Combinatorics.
7 readings8 assignments
The word "probability" is used quite often in the everyday life. However, not always we can speak about probability as some number: for that a mathematical model is needed. What is this mathematical model (probability space)? How to compute probabilities (if the model is given)? How to judge whether the model is adequate? What is conditional probability and Bayes' theorem? How our plausible reasoning can be interpreted in terms of Bayes' theorem? In this module we cover these questions using some simple examples of probability spaces and real life sutiations.
17 videos4 readings11 assignments
In the previous module we discussed how to compute probabilities of random events. But in many practical situation we are interested not only in positive or negative outcome, but also in some quantitative characteristics of an outcome. Among these cases are number of steps of an algorithms, number of points that one can win in the games involving any kind of randomness, all quantitative characteristics of a random person in some group of people. Basically settings of this kind arise in all situations when (a) any kind of uncertainty is presented (b) we are interested in quantitative characteristics. The mathematical model for this is called random variables. And we will discuss them in this module.
8 readings10 assignments1 ungraded lab
In this module, we will apply accumulated knowledge to create a project solving a certain dice game. The game is very simple: two players pick a dice each from a given pool of dices with various numbers on their sides. Then each player throws his dice and the one with the greater number on his dice wins. The game looks very simple and it seems that it is very easy to play this game optimally once we know our pool of dices. Yet it turns out that this intuition is overwhelmingly wrong: the game turns out to be very counterintuitive. In this module we will discuss the game in detail and create a program that finds an optimal strategy to play the game on a given pool of dices.
2 readings1 assignment
We asked all learners to give feedback on our instructors based on the quality of their teaching style.
UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse and economic engine, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report. Innovation is central to who we are and what we do. Here, students learn that knowledge isn't just acquired in the classroom—life is their laboratory.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Course
Johns Hopkins University
Course
Johns Hopkins University
Course
Georgia Institute of Technology
Course
861 reviews
70.49%
20.09%
6.85%
1.04%
1.50%
Showing 3 of 861
Reviewed on Oct 12, 2018
I really enjoyed taking this course. The teaching was pretty good and some of the quiz questions will challenge you if you haven't done Combinatorics before.
Reviewed on Feb 26, 2021
Special thanks to Prof. Vladimir Podolskii and Prof. Alexander S. Kulikov for their amazing explanations and diligent visuals of the concepts as well as problem sets. You Rock!
Reviewed on Jul 16, 2020
Great lessons, great instructors, literacy slides, this course has everything. I'm so proud to complete two out of five courses in this specialization!
Unlimited access to 10,000+ world-class courses, hands-on projects, and job-ready certificate programs - all included in your subscription
Earn a degree from world-class universities - 100% online
Upskill your employees to excel in the digital economy
Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:
The course may not offer an audit option. You can try a Free Trial instead, or apply for Financial Aid.
The course may offer 'Full Course, No Certificate' instead. This option lets you see all course materials, submit required assessments, and get a final grade. This also means that you will not be able to purchase a Certificate experience.
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.
If you subscribed, you get a 7-day free trial during which you can cancel at no penalty. After that, we don’t give refunds, but you can cancel your subscription at any time. See our full refund policy.
Yes. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee. If fin aid or scholarship is available for your learning program selection, you’ll find a link to apply on the description page.
Financial aid available,