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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
186 of 189 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beware of great books,
By
This review is from: Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science (Hardcover)
This book is excellent (5 stars) if you have the mathematical "maturity" that it assumes. If not, it will vary from 4 stars to 0 stars.
The problem is, the book looks as if it might be an entry level text and it is tempting to think that with a little extra hard work any intelligent, reasonably well-grounded mathematics undergraduate student could prove that he is a genius by mastering the content. A fair number, of course, will do just that. But many more will unnecessarily bloody their noses and egos. Most people skip prefaces but this one shouldn't be skipped. The preface says that most of the people who have taken the course that the book is based on have been graduate students and alumni and (some) have been juniors and seniors. To give an example of the difficulty an unwary student might find: The chapter on probability looks straightforward and well-written and it is! But it is truly useful only to students who have already studied probability theory and mastered the basic theory. The trap is that the book does, in fact, provide introductions to most of the topics covered. But in reality, they are reviews, introductions to the symbols and notation to be used and repositories for results that will be referenced throughout the book. The prerequisites for having a profitable encounter with this book are : a good understanding of elementary number theory, probability theory and linear algebra and two years of calculus with a very good understanding of infinite series. A good knowledge of generating functions and recursive functions is also necessary. A few juniors and seniors will always be dedicated and smart enough to achieve this level of maturity but it usually takes more than four years. In addition, while any reasonably intelligent mathematics student can learn the topics covered in this book, it is written by three master programmers and discrete mathematicians and inevitably also contains enough to challenge just about anyone (even them.) After all, the book is dedicated to Leonard Euler, possibly implying that the authors think he is among the very few persons who could have solved most (all?) of the problems.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Web site for all Knuth's books (incl errata etc..),
By A Customer
This review is from: Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science (Hardcover)
is: http://www-cs-staff.Stanford.EDU/~knuth
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