Customer Reviews

Basic Posets

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This text proposes to present the pure or basic theory of partially ordered sets(posets) excluding related topics like lattice theory, graph theory, and combinatorics that involve the theory of posets but are not central to it. The text is designed to be accessible to upper division undergraduates in mathematics or mathematics education and is presented at an appropriate level. The material seems appropriately presented, and good and appropriate examples are included, making the theory of posets accessible to better undergraduates.

The contents comprise a fairly comprehensive survey of the theory of posets.

Rigorous concepts and language from set theory and graph theory are used to convey the ideas. Much of the exposition is in the form of definitions and discussion, without devoting space to develop the theory from axioms. Informal arguments supporting theorems are presented, with formal proofs extracted into an appendix.

The text is not very dense, being typeset in what appears to be a 1 1/2 spaced format, ending up looking somewhat like a university thesis. Lots of graphics (often including Hasse diagrams embedded directly in the running text) are used to illustrate ideas. These are helpful for understanding.

The editing could be better--errata for the book would probably contain one error for every other page, but this doesn't overly hinder reading. You can generally spot an error and immediately know what the authors intended.

All of this leads to the feeling of the text being a "light" overview survey. A good set of references are provided if you end up needing to dig deeper into any of the concepts. The value of this book is, in my opinion, that it collects together in one spot, ideas from much of the literature on posets.