Undergraduate Seminar in Discrete Mathematics
This MIT OpenCourseWare seminar puts students in charge of the material: each week participants read a research paper from the recent combinatorics or graph theory literature and present it to the class, then field questions from their peers. The syllabus covers topics across discrete mathematics generally, but the real focus is on doing mathematics like a working mathematician, including how to read a dense paper, extract its core argument, and explain it clearly to others. Written communication gets equal weight, and the course culminates in a final paper where each student develops their own related topic in depth. Course materials on OCW include the reading list, presentation schedule, and assignment guidelines, all free to access. There is no instructor lecture track; the class is built entirely around student work and discussion, making it a hands-on introduction to mathematical research and exposition rather than a survey course.