Customer Reviews

Combinatorial Methods with Computer Applications (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)

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This is, on the whole, a generally good book on discrete mathematics- strong on graphs (the author's specialty) and networks, not so comprehensive on combinatorics. The eclectic mix of topics covered - permutations, recurrences, generating functions, graphs, networks, finite geometries, etc - tend to make the book disjointed and unfocused at times. The reader will be better served by studying the topics individually in greater depth. A possible reading list would be: Combinatorial Problems and Exercises by Lovasz, generatingfunctionology by Wilf and, yes, Gross's very own Graph Theory and Its Applications.

Good book overall. Easy to read and informative. Good at teaching you how to solve problems. Example problems are sometimes only the easiest problems, and extending the method to harder problems is not always trivially apparent. Also sometimes skips somewhat important steps in solving example problems.