Customer Reviews

Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

This is probably the best Discrete Math book that I have found. It's very thorough and covers all the topics of Discrete Mathematics that one would expect it to. There is a proof for most major theorems and numerous examples.

The "but..." is that this book, like almost every math text that I have ever come across, is NOT very readable and gets EXTREMELY boring at parts. I would say that math books can only be so interesting, but I have come across one math text that I honestly enjoyed from beginning to end: "Linear Algebra and Its Applications," by Lay. That book is proof that it can be done, but this book sure isn't.

Also, one last word of advise... I found that the student solutions guide that was written for this text is a must have. It has the worked out solutions to many of the books problems, which is a big help considering that Discrete Math is all about how you found the answer.

Discrete mathematics is a difficult subject. If God himself wrote the best book there could ever be on Discrete Mathematics, and if God was your professor, believe me, it would still be a hard class. The point is: the subject matter is difficult to grasp and this book does little to help you understand anything.

This book is not very good. Here's why: It does not explain Big-0, Big-Omega, Big Theta and other important topics. The author gives the formal definition, but does NOT provide any worked out solutions from which you can follow and learn. In the back of each section where all the problems are listed, the author introduces NEW material that is VERY important to know. So you have to play "detective" with this book and take a "forensic" approach if you want to learn anything. The book tells you to look a few sections ahead to find a definition that will allow you to solve a problem in the current section. The author uses MANY run-on sentences in the book when trying to explain important concepts. Some sections are good though. The sections on logic and sets are good because they actually HAVE worked out problems that are systematic and don't skip steps.

Why can't you just pick up a book, read it and learn? If that's what you want to do, this book's not for you. If you want to spend hours and hours in the library reading over and over but not learning much, then I suggest you buy this book.

If you are the type of person who learns best by reading a textbook and doing the exercises, don't waste your money on this book because the section on the "Growth of Functions" has NOT ONE example of how to prove if f(x) is O( g(x) ), or if f(x) is big-Omega( g(x) ), or if f(x) is big-Theta( g(x) ), for example. The book has all the formal definitions written down for you, but no problems are worked out algebraically. It does not point out the common pitfalls or anything like that either.

The other reviewer was obviously talking about "Discrete Math and Its Applications," which is the actual text book. This book is the student solutions guide for that text. So don't buy this book thinking that it is a text book, because this book was only meant to suppliment the text.

I found that this guide was a must have companion to "Discrete Math and Its Applications." It has the worked out solutions to many of the exercises in the text, which is very helpful. All-in-all, a definite must-have suppliment to the text.

First some background: I'm not a math major or someone with a lot of experience in math. I can't speak about the usefulness or benefit of this book as an introduction to more advanced dicrete math topics because I've never studied anything more advanced. What I can tell you is that I used this book a couple of years ago when I returned to school after 20 years to finish my Bachelor's degree. I found the book useful and quite adequate to learn the basics of the subject, and this book was one of the reasons Discrete became my favorite math class. There is a ton of material packed in between the covers -- mathematics history, biographical sketches, spartan but helpful illustrations, web links, additional book and periodical resources -- everything you need to get through the course and more.

Be warned though -- the first two or three chapters are kind of dry and difficult. Rosen explains things, but he doesn't spoon feed you. There's quite a bit of vocabulary and new ideas to digest; mathematical induction is just plain hard to understand in the beginning and it takes quite a while (and a lot of practice) to learn to construct well-formed proofs. Do yourself a favor and spend the extra money on the solution manual. What you don't understand just by reading the text is usually, though not always, made much clearer by working through the problems while reviewing the answers with the solution process laid out for you. WORK A LOT OF PROBLEMS. You will never really understand the concepts or retain the information without spending hours wrestling with this stuff. This isn't Art Appreciation 101 or Intro to Government. You're not going to grasp everything just by attending class and (maybe) reading the book. You've got to do some real analytical processing and wear out some erasers. You can fake your way through some classes, but this isn't one of them.

Once you get through the first three chapters, the rest of the book goes much more smoothly. Maybe you're acclimated to the subject by this time and it just comes to you easier. If you're like me, you should really begin enjoying things at this time and seeing how this can actually be useful in terms of understanding computation and computer science. You also begin to appreciate the organizational and teaching style of the book. It progresses at a good pace, but provides enough intoductory information and exercises to keep you from feeling like a complete idiot once you reach the more advanced sections in the chapter. Sure, there are some rough spots and a few sections that you just have to re-read several times. This IS a math text -- you can't expect it to be a page-turner like a good novel.

For those reviewers who think this book is too theoretical or too terse or just a pile of proofs thrown on top of each other, they need to open some of the other higher level math books out there. This book may not be perfect, but it was pure joy compared to my nightmare experience with numerical analysis (Numerical Analysis and Methods by Epperson). As for the cost, the book is way over-priced, but then what text book isn't? It just comes with the territory.

I have used all four editions of Rosen's book with much success with mathematics and computer science students in discrete mathematics courses for over ten years. Discrete mathematics should not be approached as a cookbook subject, and Rosen does not take a cookbook approach to the material in his book. Students are not spoonfed; they need to work carefully through the text. Rosen is very successful in helping students learn to think mathematically. Students who are serious about their study of discrete mathematics and computing will profit greatly from working through many of the more than 650 well-chosen examples and applications, ranging from easy to difficult. The new fourth edition has added many new applications, including system specifications, Web searching, and the reve's puzzle. The exercises (over 3000) are unequaled in any other discrete mathematics textbook --- they range from elementary and routine to very challenging. Answers to odd-numbered problems are in the back of the book. The new accompanying Web site includes over 250 additional exercises with answers; its many features are certainly worth exploring. A very student-friendly Student Solutions Guide provides detailed solutions to the odd-numbered exercises with much additional information on the material and how to approach it. Especially noteworthy is a companion paperback, "Applications of Discrete Mathematics" (McGraw-Hill, 1991) edited by J. Michaels and K. Rosen, consisting of 24 chapters, each devoted to an interesting application of discrete mathematics and well-suited to either classroom coverage or individual reading; some examples are bin packing, coding theory, Catalan numbers, legislative apportionment, network survivability, graph multicoloring.

As a student in the CS curriculum at the Univ. of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign we are required to use this book. This turned out to be a good thing. We went through a large portion in our intro course and finished it up in another course, and it provided good examples and explanations. Although the course you may take might not correspond perfectly with this text, it is good overall at touching on the important concepts and giving just enough examples to facilitate the learning of material.

This book easily ranks as my favorite lower-division math/computer science textbook. Aside from its omission of elementary coding theory, this book contains just about every important discrete mathematical topic (logic, sets, functions, algorithms, complexity, combinatorics, relations, graphs, Boolean algebra, formal language theory) that a beginning student should be introduced to. Plenty of examples in each section that reflect the end-of-section exercises. Very well organized in that key definitions, rules, and theorems are boxed and well highlighted.
Concepts are well explained and reinforced with numerous examples.
And most importantly, plenty of engaging problems that range from trivial to quite challenging. Applications to areas such as computer science are in abundance. But most enjoyable for me are the numerous biographical sketches of important discrete mathematicians. All around an excellent text, and one I had been searching for since my days as a freshman in college when I had wondered when, as a math major, I would ever get to the fun stuff: logic, graphs, codes, etc.. Little did I know that I would have to wait 17 years as a professor at the same college to finally get to it.

**From a student's perspective** I still have yet to find a decently written math book and this book is no exception. Most of Rosen's examples were extremely confusing and many (usually his proofs) contained severe jumps in logic. It almost seemed like he assumed he knew how he got to where he jumped to. However, since I am a novice at Discrete Math, I could not. I did find, however, that the book was a little less confusing if I read the material after my professor lectured over it. Trying to read it beforehand was almost hopeless, for me at least. There has to be a book that is more clear than this one. I just hope other students have better luck with this book than I did.

The "International Edition" I got is actually the Fourth Edition of the Rosen's Discrete Math books. There are quite some structure and content updates in the most recent 6th edition of the book. If you are just buying this book for self-study, it would be perfect. But if you are buying as a textbook, maybe it would bring you a little trouble. The biggest problem would be finding the right number for the exercises in your homework!

great stuff, definitely helps you really master lots of discrete math on all levels of difficulty