Rating: 
Summary: book is good enough for me to fail my class
Review: <pre>if you know your instructor is going to use this book in his course, stay away from this class. If you are really good at math, and had some programming experiences before, go ahead buy this text and spend mega hours in your life. If you really have to buy the text, try to bug your instructor and TA all the time to ensure a passing grade. My instructor actually declared that he won't teach again with this text.
Rating: 
Summary: not a good book but better than nothing
Review: This is a pretty standard college math book. This book has its good parts and its bad parts (mostly bad parts). Some important stuff is hidden away in the questions to the sections, like the definition of "disjunctive normal form". And even then, it doesn't explain what it means clearly (luckly the teacher explained it in English). I think this book covers way too much in so little space. If you think the page count is large, you probably don't own the book. I think there should be at least twice the amount of pages for the amount of stuff it tries to cram in. The sections are hard to read and some of the proofs are hard to understand (if they prove anything at all). There are absolutely no derivations either, it's all proofs at the most. Also, there are too few examples and many of the questions are very difficult compared to the examples they give in the chapter. Speaking of examples, they don't really explain why, they just explain how. This is especially apparent in the counting and the probability theory chapters. My favorite has to be the examples in the counting chapter where they just say what is done in English and directly convert what they just said in English to a formula. I'd rather have an explaination of why they did what they did than have a formula translated directly to English.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible book
Review: - Poorly written.
- Grossly over worded.
- Poor explanations with lack of metaphors.
- Written by a robot for robots.
Rating:
Summary: Loads of information Little explanation
Review: I have always enjoyed math, and I enjoy the subject of Discrete Math. However, as a university student, I find this book to be confusing when discussing such difficult topics as big-O notation. It has been some 20 years since I had algebra. This book does very little to help explain some of the underlying algebra used in the examples in the book. I feel there are sufficient examples, but poorly expanded and worked out. Truly, if you are on top of your game when it comes to algebra and have not let any time lapsed during your education, then you might feel right at home with this book. Otherwise, brush up on your lower math and begin to dig in.
Rating:
Summary: Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications
Review: The book is well organized. Explanations seem to be clear, but they are too basic. The problems are good, if the book explained how to work them. It is a book for the experienced in Discrete Math, not for someone who is learning Discrete for the first time. I did not like nor enjoy math for the first time when I had to study from this book. Also, it is overprice for what the book offers. Universities should not require it.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre book costs a fortune
Review: Discrete mathematics is a difficult subject. If God himself wrote the best book there could ever be on Discrete Mathematics, and if God was your professor, believe me, it would still be a hard class. The point is: the subject matter is difficult to grasp and this book does little to help you understand anything. This book is not very good. Here's why: It does not explain Big-0, Big-Omega, Big Theta and other important topics. The author gives the formal definition, but does NOT provide any worked out solutions from which you can follow and learn. In the back of each section where all the problems are listed, the author introduces NEW material that is VERY important to know. So you have to play "detective" with this book and take a "forensic" approach if you want to learn anything. The book tells you to look a few sections ahead to find a definition that will allow you to solve a problem in the current section. The author uses MANY run-on sentences in the book when trying to explain important concepts. Some sections are good though. The sections on logic and sets are good because they actually HAVE worked out problems that are systematic and don't skip steps. Why can't you just pick up a book, read it and learn? If that's what you want to do, this book's not for you. If you want to spend hours and hours in the library reading over and over but not learning much, then I suggest you buy this book. If you are the type of person who learns best by reading a textbook and doing the exercises, don't waste your money on this book because the section on the "Growth of Functions" has NOT ONE example of how to prove if f(x) is O( g(x) ), or if f(x) is big-Omega( g(x) ), or if f(x) is big-Theta( g(x) ), for example. The book has all the formal definitions written down for you, but no problems are worked out algebraically. It does not point out the common pitfalls or anything like that either.
Rating: 
Summary: Teachers please choose textbooks more careful.
Review: This book might be great based on a math professor's reading level/understanding, but not for the student.
I've never had this much trouble trying to understand a math book.
Most of the theorems are very hard to understand with the book's description/wording.
(I'm rating the book ave through being too nice)
Professor's, please go back to your undergraduate understanding level and rate the book, not from your current level.
I don't know why this class is a requirement. We are almost done with this class and it's an easy A but no one is really learning anything. This is a one semester class which forces the teacher to rush to get the required sections done without teaching important material from skipped sections needed to understand the required ones (sorry for the bad grammar, that's why I'm in math). This class should either be a 2 semester course (too boring though unless a better book is published) or eliminated as a requirement. LOGIC IS MY RECOMMENDED PREREQUISITE for this course since those sections are usually skipped.
The mathematical induction sections are the most fun so far and it's the only section in this book that kind of makes sense, but that's only because I learned some of that through Calc 2 and our teacher is good.
I don't like to negatively rate stuff but the book is very frustrating.
Mr. Rosen is obviously a discrete math/comp sci genius but he is having a hard time stepping back from that level to write a book aimed toward underclassmen.
Rating: 
Summary: The "Violin" Book of Discrete Mathematics
Review: This book easily ranks as my favorite lower-division math/computer science textbook. Aside from its omission of elementary coding theory, this book contains just about every important discrete mathematical topic (logic, sets, functions, algorithms, complexity, combinatorics, relations, graphs, Boolean algebra, formal language theory) that a beginning student should be introduced to. Plenty of examples in each section that reflect the end-of-section exercises. Very well organized in that key definitions, rules, and theorems are boxed and well highlighted.
Concepts are well explained and reinforced with numerous examples.
And most importantly, plenty of engaging problems that range from trivial to quite challenging. Applications to areas such as computer science are in abundance. But most enjoyable for me are the numerous biographical sketches of important discrete mathematicians. All around an excellent text, and one I had been searching for since my days as a freshman in college when I had wondered when, as a math major, I would ever get to the fun stuff: logic, graphs, codes, etc.. Little did I know that I would have to wait 17 years as a professor at the same college to finally get to it.
Rating:
Summary: Discrete Mathematics and its Applications
Review: As mentioned above, if you are not well versed in mathematics, this book is very difficult to read. I needed this book for school and would not recomend it otherwise. Topics such as mathematical induction, counting techniques, and relations are difficult to grasp and this book does not adequately explain them for those who are not familiar with the topics already. Most of the people in the class who understood the concepts were math majors not CS majors. The exercises were likewise poorly divised. The concepts were illustrated then a few problems seemed to relate to the chapter information, but the rest jump off to other dimensions that are not intuitive to the uninitiated. If you need the book, buy it. Otherwise look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: A nightmare
Review: If you are not an expert at mathematics already, be prepared for a semester of swear words and high blood pressure. Like other reviewers, I found this book to be too vague to be useful. Of the "many" examples that others claim this book has, most are too trivial to help with a majority of the exercises. I guess one is supposed to purchase the student solutions manual, meaning in order to learn discrete mathematics, we are supposed to pony up [money] to Mr. Rosen.
The vagueness of the book was my major problem, as there are only so many examples that read "Let set A be a subset of C that has elements greater or equal to n, if n is an odd integer..." blah blah blah. Sure he's trying to show how its applicable in all contexts, but if you don't understand the concept in the first place, it doesn't do any good.
The one thing I did like about this book was the brief biographical entry on the various mathematicians who contributed to the topic under discussion.
Professors, please, never use this book if you want your students to learn something.
|
