CS1021

Two hours

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Discrete Mathematics

January 2003

Answer any THREE questions

The use of electronic calculators is not permitted.

[PTO]
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1. a) Let A denote the propositional logic formula

(p  ( (q  r )  p ) )

Find formulae in DNF and CNF that are equivalent to A, simplifying your answers where
possible. Is A a tautology? Is A satisfiable? (8 marks)

b) Let T (x, y) denote the predicate “x is as tall as y” and CS (x) denote “x is a Computer
Science student”, where the universe of interest is the set of all people in the world. Use
quantifiers to express each of the following statements:-

i) David is as tall as Jane.

ii) David is as tall as every Computer Science student.
ii) There is someone who is as tall as every Computer Science student.
iv) Everyone is as tall as himself (or herself)
v) There is a Computer Science student who is as tall as no-one except himself (or
herself).

Translate the following expressions into English:-

vi)  x  y T (y,x)
vii)  x  y T (y,x)
viii) xCS(x)  (T (John,x)   y (T (John,y) n )  CS(y)  (x  y)))
(12 marks)

2. a) Let B be a set of books, and let C(b) and P(b) denote the cost and number of pages of b,
respectively. For each of the following relations on B, say whether the relation is
reflexive, whether it is symmetric, whether it is transitive, whether it is an equivalence
relation and whether it is a partial order relation.

aPb iff C (a)  C (b) and P (a)  P (b)

aQb iff C (a)  C (b) or P (a)  P (b)
aRb iff C (a) = C (b) and P (a) = P (b)
aSb iff C (a) = C (b) or P (a) = P (b)

Justify your answers. For those relations that are equivalence relations, describe the
equivalence classes. (12 marks)

b) Let R and S be relations defined on the set of all people by

a R b iff a is a parent of b
a S b iff a is a sibling (brother or sister) of b

What are the relations R  S, S  R, R  R and S  S? (8 marks)

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3. a) Explain the difference between a formal language and a natural language.

A small formal language R of arithmetic expressions is defined by the rules:-
 Every variable name x, y, z……is a formula in R
 If A, B are formulae in R, then so are

A B +
A B *
A B 
A B /

Give examples of formulae in this language.

Show that the following expression is a formula in R by giving its parse tree:

xyz*yz+*

Rewrite the expression in the more conventional infix form. (8 marks)

b) Prove by induction that, for all integers n 1

n
i)  (2i  1)
i 0
2
 (n  1)(2n  1)( 2n  3) / 3 (6 marks)

ii) Let p (n) be the statement “n2 + 5n + 1 is even.”

Prove that whenever p (k) is true, so is p (k +1). For which integers n is the statement
p (n) true? Comment on your answer. (6 marks)

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4. a) State the inclusion-exclusion principle. (2 marks)

In a group of 250 students, 187 have taken a course in Java, 99 have taken a course in
C and 35 have taken a course in SML. 88 have taken course in both Java and C, 23
have taken courses in both C and SML and 29 in both Java and SML. If 19 students
have taken courses in all 3 languages, use the inclusion- exclusion principle to find out
how many students have not taken a course in any of these languages. (6 marks)

b) In each of the following cases, find the probability that a randomly generated bit string
of length 10 does not contain a 0 if bits are independent and
i) a 0 bit and a 1 bit are equally likely
ii) the probability that a bit is a 1 is 0.6
iii) the probability that the i th bit is a 1 is 1/2i, for i = 1,2,3…..10 (6 marks)

c) Using only the definition

n
  is the number of subsets of a set of size n which have m elements
 m

justify the following equations:-

n  n 
     and
 m  n  m

n  n 1  n  1
  =   +   (6 marks)
 m  m  1  m 