Customer Reviews

Discrete Mathematical Structures (5th Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I used this as the primary text in a University Math/Programming course. The book is very dry and hard to read. While the information in the text is correct, it is hard to imagine a more uninteresting and dry way to present the material. Pseudo code was unnecessarily difficult to understand. Same goes for the main math concepts, which often had to be explained at length by the instructor.

As a comprehensive book on discrete math I really found this text lacking. At times some examples were vaguely illustrated or maybe omitted altogether.

If you're using this for a discrete math class, hopefully your instructor has enough supplemental material to carry the text, but I'm not as lucky. Doing an independent study of the course that used this text meant using Google a lot.

I also have the next edition, and I can say that there is hardly a difference as far as the lack of examples and overall clarity.

Just to give you an idea, I took "Discrete Math" at CCAC (a very large Community College in Pittsburgh) back in 2006, and this was their book of choice. Yes, we covered every chapter. The prior short reviews about its content being quite difficult to understand means that they either had a terrible professor who couldn't convey concepts, or they didn't show up for class and solely relied on the book. I knew nothing beforehand and left with an A.

This book is full of examples and concepts, each building off of the last section and last chapter. Every odd answer is in the back, allowing for you to check the homework before stumbling into class. Numerous involved projects are at the end of every chapter. There's little humor in the book.

The one thing that my professor insisted on adding was more information on game theory and its relation to discrete math. This isn't really present in the book.

This book has been used at Community Colleges and Columbia University alike. Its difficulty to learn is evident on the amount of work you put into the course.

Again, this isn't a standard math course book. This is a DISCRETE book. Unless you have a professor you can check concept answers against and ask questions, you're SOL. This book is the tool by which you will REALLY learn discrete math, but you've gotta work for it because it's not a standard math course...and you'll need a professor's help to get an A. And any attempt at transforming a Discrete book into something that you'd be familiar and comfortable with is only going to make grasping the concepts even harder.

According to an instructor of mine (not the one teaching the course), this book was written by mathematicians for mathematicians. If you are not already well-versed in proofs and logic, this book is excruciatingly difficult to follow. The instructor teaching the course was a Ph.D. from MIT. Obviously he understands it, but both he and the book utterly failed to explain the concepts in terms that a normal computer engineer/scientist undergraduate could understand. If this is required reading for you Discrete Structures (or equivalent course) I highly recommend getting a second book that explains the terms in plain English (as opposed to in the language of Math, which I am not fluent in). Unfortunately I was not smart enough to do this myself early on, so I cannot provide a recommendation. Suffice it to say I learned my lesson and I hope my experience benefits you.

Explanations are overly complicated. Although we're using it for class, even the professor has problems with this book. Some sections are OK, others... not so much.

This book is very very dense. You have to reread everything at least 5 times before understanding it. This class i used this book for was soo easy but reading this book was soo difficult it made the class itself difficult. Good material just very dense and was written very badly. Also sometimes the correct answers didnt correspond to the answers in the back of the book. Actually alot of the time.

I have never been a math wizard, but I really enjoyed this book, and have kept it around because it is so helpful.

I appreciate the organization of the book. If you want to study a chapter out of sequence, the opening page tells you which earlier chapters are necessary to understand the new one. The exercises in each section are progressive - you can understand the topic with the first few problems, and by the time you work through the section you will REALLY understand it.
I used the fourth edition, published in 2000, so perhaps there are some inaccuracies in the earlier edition. I found few examples of wrong answers.

I have one degree in Accounting so I am good with numbers to say the least.

This book is designed for students that already know most of the subject matter they are trying to teach. You will often find yourself searching the internet and math sites on how to work the problems and understand the subject matter.

If you know someone who has this book borrow it to get your homework problems and save your money.

If your college does a semester end review of the class complain that they require such a terrible book and maybe the author will no longer assume you know the subject matter.

It appears the authors created this book for people with prior knowledge of Discrete Structures. Most of the exercises require you to research in other places which defeats the purpose of this textbook! In a class I recently took, most of the students actually complained about the college using this book because it makes the subject look harder than it already is.

I am reviewing the 5th edition. This is an excellent text, easy to learn from, with a crystal clear presentation. I've found few errors in this edition and the ones that I have found are non-substantive typos, nothing more. Each chapter is broken out into digestible sections, and each section is followed by a wealth of problems. The problems are progressive, starting out very easy, but none of them are too hard to do: the authors' intent is clearly to build the reader's skill with the material. The problems are a mix of routine computations and some proofs. Answers to all odd numbered problems are given in the back of the book, making the text valuable for self-study.

I disagree with the reviewer who criticized the book on the basis of the authors' institutional affiliations. The text should be judged on its merits: If you're looking for a solid presentation that flows logically and naturally from one topic to the next, then this is the book for you. On the other hand if you're expecting a terse, densely compacted thicket of mathematical symbolism, then this isn't your book.