Finite and Discrete Mathematics

Discrete math is the language of structures you can count, list, or draw arrows between — the non-continuous side of mathematics that underlies most of computer science and a good chunk of combinatorics-flavored research. You'll spend the semester proving things by induction, setting up recurrences and generating functions to count configurations, and reasoning about graphs (planarity, Euler trails, trees, colorings) through weekly homeworks and two midterms. It sits parallel to the calculus sequence and feeds directly into algorithms, cryptography, and any later course where "how many ways" or "is there a path" becomes the central question.