CS103: Mathematical Foundations of Computing

Course Overview

University: Stanford
Instructor: Keith Schwarz
Status: Not Started
Progress: 0/32 lectures

Learn to reason formally about computation—proofs, logic, and computability.

Resources

📺 Stanford CS103 Playlist
🌐 Course Website
📚 Course Materials

Key Topics

• Mathematical logic and formal reasoning
• Set theory and functions
• Proofs and proof techniques
• Graph theory
• Formal languages and automata
• Computability and the Turing machine
• Decidability and undecidability
• Complexity basics

Why This Matters

This course teaches you the formal language of computer science. You'll learn:

• Logic: How to reason precisely about correctness
• Computability: What can and cannot be computed
• Proofs: How to verify claims rigorously
• Automata: The foundation of compilers and parsing

Learning Goals

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• Write clear, rigorous mathematical proofs
• Understand formal languages and automata
• Reason about computability and undecidability
• Apply logic to verify program correctness
• Understand the limits of computation

Study Plan

Estimated Time: 5-7 hours/week for 10-12 weeks

• Lectures: ~3 hours/week
• Problem Sets: ~3-4 hours/week
• Reading: ~1 hour/week

Daily Notes

Week 1: Logic & Proofs

• [ ] Lecture 1: Introduction
• [ ] Lecture 2: Logic
• [ ] Problem Set 1

---

Problem Sets

---

Key Concepts

---

Key Takeaways

---

[← Back to Spring Quarter](Online Studying/CS - Stanford, MIT, Berkley/Year 1/Spring Quarter/index.md) | Next Course: Discrete Math →