<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Very helpful
Review: Combinatorics is a bit of an oddity. Although a few principles (like pigeonholing) apply in many cases, every combinatorial problem has unique features. Attacking a new situation is almost like starting all over again, unless you can recognize an old problem in your new one.This book gives a number brief case studies. Its 18 chapters (not counting intro and closing) span a variety of interesting topics. Cameron doesn't write down to the reader - it takes serious thought and some mathematical background to get full value from the reading. The examples are nowhere near as concrete as you'd expect in a popularized version. Still, the author avoids opaque references to specialist terms, and keeps the text approachable. I have personal reason to like this book more than it's high quality warrants. I was thumbing through it in a store, and skimmed a page that described Kirkman's schoolgirls (a two-level problem in selecting subsets). Quite abruptly, I realized that those charming young ladies exactly represented a problem I had in connecting the parts of a multiprocessor. One or two references later, I had a practical way out of a potentially ugly quandry. This material is not just fun for its own intellectual challenge, it has application to real engineering, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction to combinatorics!
Review: Every discipline has key introductory texts that motivate the subject, whet the appetite for more, and guide a novice to see the forest despite the trees. 'Combinatorics' by Peter Cameron is one such gem! Combinatorics has a reputation for being a collection of disparate clever ad hoc arguments. The author has carefully presented binding principles such as double counting, the pigeon-hole principle, generating functions, enumeration via group actions, sets of distinct representatives,...see the book for more, that makes coherent combinatorics as a discourse, despite its diverse application.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to combinatorics!
Review: Every discipline has key introductory texts that motivate the subject, whet the appetite for more, and guide a novice to see the forest despite the trees. 'Combinatorics' by Peter Cameron is one such gem! Combinatorics has a reputation for being a collection of disparate clever ad hoc arguments. The author has carefully presented binding principles such as double counting, the pigeon-hole principle, generating functions, enumeration via group actions, sets of distinct representatives,...see the book for more, that makes coherent combinatorics as a discourse, despite its diverse application.
Rating:
Summary: Best Single Book on Combinatorics
Review: The book is divided into two parts corresponding roughly to undergraduate material and graduate. The selection of topics is robust; the writing is clear and consise. The level is senior and above. The reader should have some knowledge of advanced math such as group theory, and analysis of algorithms. Great book! One of the best ever!
Rating:
Summary: Best Single Book on Combinatorics
Review: The book is divided into two parts corresponding roughly to undergraduate material and graduate. The selection of topics is robust; the writing is clear and consise. The level is senior and above. The reader should have some knowledge of advanced math such as group theory, and analysis of algorithms. Great book! One of the best ever!
<< 1 >>
| 
