The course is intended for a mixed audience and has minimal prerequisites. However, a few elements are required:
- A rudimentary knowledge of combinatorics, particularly of binomial coefficients and the inclusion/exclusion principle. If you lack this background, I advise you to study chapters 1 and 4 of Victor Bryant's Aspects of Combinatorics (1992) or a similar text before the course. I will also assume that you are familiar with the concept of inductive proofs.
- A rudimentary knowledge of probability theory, including the concepts of a probability distribution, conditional probability, and statistical independence. If you have never had a course on probability theory, you may want to study chapters 1 and 5 of William Feller's Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications (3rd ed., 1968) or another introductory textbook on probability.
- A rudimentary knowledge of calculus, roughly at high school level. My fact sheet on logarithms covers some of this ground.