Customer Reviews

Combinatorics: A Problem Oriented Approach (Mathematical Association of America Textbooks)

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Yes, there are some solutions. I was extremely disappointed with this book. To be fair, it says " Classroom Resourse Materials". It may be a fantastic book if you are an instructor looking for problems for your students. However, I am a student. I hoped to get a book that would show me in some detail how these problems are solved. It didn't do that for even one. Not one. It did give the answer to some. It didn't even explain anything. It is what it says: a book of problems. Quite frankly, I don't think it's that hard to think of problems. The hard part is solving them. So, if you need to understand how to work problems -- this book is not for you.

We all can count, but few can count really well. Combinatorics can be considered the art of sophisticated counting and it is a subject often neglected in the college curriculum. This book, with a direct, plunge ahead to the problems approach, covers all of the standard areas of the field.
Since the amount of explanatory text is kept to a minimum, it would not be easy to use the book as a textbook. The standard approach is a few paragraphs of text followed by a page or more of problems. Without sufficient additional explanation, the general student will no doubt struggle.
However, the quality of the problems is excellent and solutions to many are provided. Problems in combinatorics are fairly standard issue and the author acknowledges this in a brief list of standard problem types at the end of the book. However, it would have been an improvement if appropriate page numbers would have been associated with each entry in the list. Another feature that adopters will find very helpful is a list of dependencies. The list is a simple table noting that the problem dependencies are such that a problem can be assigned after a certain other one has been done.
While the quality of the book is excellent, one should think carefully before using it as a textbook. Much better suited as a course supplement, it is probably best used as a reference.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission

we use it for mathematical olympiad training. students are not very good at combinatorics and the book is very good at drilling the basics into them.

it's true there are no solutions. but the solutions that are given are prototype solutions. you can get solutions to other problems from them.

the author should really come out with a version with more solutions and add more problems. that would make it much better.

Yes, there are some solutions. I was extremely disappointed with this book. To be fair, it says " Classroom Resourse Materials". It may be a fantastic book if you are an instructor looking for problems for your students. However, I am a student. I hoped to get a book that would show me in some detail how these problems are solved. It didn't do that for even one. Not one. It did give the answer to some. It didn't even explain anything. It is what it says: a book of problems. Quite frankly, I don't think it's that hard to think of problems. The hard part is solving them. So, if you need to understand how to work problems -- this book is not for you.