Customer Reviews

Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The text itself is brief, but still a good overview of discrete mathematics. The main problem is the student and instructor guides. The answers frequently have errors and problems are not reiterated in the text, so a student or a grader has to flip back and forth between at least two books to make sense of the solutions. Even more frustrating for students is the fact that some problems do not have good answers: the author admits that he cannot solve the problem and refers to answers from other problems instead. This is simply not fair to students who may be struggling with the material.

As a teaching assistant, it is not up to me to select the text books. If it were, I would look for a replacement.

On the surface this seems like a great book - all of the topics in a Discrete Mathematics course are covered, the information is cleanly laid out, and the quality of the binding is excellent. At closer observation, though, this book has some serious flaws that should keep it from being considered from any universitie's curriculum.

Discrete math should be the class that introduces students to the beauty that can be found in math through proofs. Proofs are the foundation of mathematics and - especailly in an introductory text - should be comprehensive. This book leaves out important steps in a good deal of the proofs, making the proofs themselves hard to read. This should be an easy, clear class for anyone intrested in math. If you are struggling, you owe it to yourself to find a real text on proofs to see what mathematical beauty really is.

My advise is - if you have to use this text - buy a good book on proofs and another good book on number theory. There are plenty on Amazon.

Attention, students! Don't be fooled by those words like "best book in the field", "unrivaled content."

This book contains lots of examples but NONE of them is interesting. Really. The explanations are too vague. Mr Rosen must be thinking that an "obvious" example needs no further explanation.

I've read a few math books and found a lot of fascinating applications but the applications in this book are just too theoretical rather than practical.

The stuff about Logic (the very beginning section) is more confusing than really useful, especially the section about how to translate between English sentences and mathematical statements.

I believe there are much better books out there. Before you buy this book, think carefully.

While the book has a very comprehensive overview of logic, algorithms, and definitions; however, the expression for understanding the examples (such as how to calculate matrices) doesn't give a exact method of how they came to that conclusion. Or why exactly the truth tables are what they are. It contains everything you need to do discrete mathematics, but doesn't concretely give you a sense of correct method of order. If you have a tutor, mentor, or professor to help you its pretty easy, but it definitely is not teach yourself discrete mathematics.

This is a very good book on Discrete Math. I have looked at several books and the only other book that comes close to quality is "Discrete Mathematics" by Hein.
To get the most out of this book it is recommended to get the solutions manual. Also the book's website has several useful worked out examples and links. Discrete Math is what computer science is all about and if you don't like Discrete Math then you should stay away from CS.

Discete mathematics is one of those subjects where it's hard to effectively write a text for. However, this book does not solve that problem.

I think the best feature of this book is how the author writes some of the explanations to the problem. For instance: given a function f(x) = 9x+5 and g(x) = 9x+4, which equation is greater if x is greater then 1. The author would attempt to explain it something like this: Clearly 9x is greater then 9x...

Another awesome feature of this book is how the solution manual is done. The explanation is writte in block text to conserve space so you ahve to sit there and copy out the steps out and while you're doing that - parse the text block. Glancing the back of the book for some quick help is probably a 3 hour process of understanding the ridiculous step skipping answer.

Rosen also writes the book like a mathematician. Is there anythign wrong with that? No, not really, not if you're writing for people who already know the topic. In the case of the studeent, it's very very terse.

It's fairly obvious that the editors were so confused by the text that they didn't bother to make suggestions on how to clear up concepts. Terms are used in section 1 of a chapter that aren't defined until section 4 of a chapter. This is especially annoying in chapter 2.

There is absolutely nothing good about this book. In fact, I would have given it a negative star if it was possible. The other annoying thing about the book is the price. I think the rule at universities is 'the crappier the book - the more money you should charge the students'. Why? Because you'll have to find another book to replace it with soon anyaway.

In addition to this book, it's probably recommended that you buy every other Discrete Math book out there to use as an astrological guide to figuiring out the puzzles hidden in the text of this book.

If you're a hobbyist, it's best that you get a good number theory book and figure this out yourself. This book will only confuse, frustrate you, and lead you into insanity.

The most interesting aspect of this book is the stories at the bottom of the pages.

I had to use this book as a student for my discrete mathematics course. I hated it. I found this book hard to understand and follow. The ideas weren't clearly explained. There were lots of problems at the end of the section that were barely or not at all explained in the chapter. There were only a limited number of examples in each chapter, and most of the examples finished with "the proof to this is left as an exercise to the reader." If this is a book designed to teach discrete mathematics, I would assume the reader wants something that wouldn't leave every example as an "exercise" to the reader. I want a book that gives examples, lots of them, and finishes each one. This book could use a lot more of that.

I like this book and use it for teaching my students. As a teacher, you have the opportunity to select similar problems for class activity and homework assignment. Also, you can find not only simple and middle-level problems but also high-level problems to provide a good source for active students. Unfortunately, the author uses the letters "F" and "T" in the truth tables instead of much easier and perspective "0" and "1", which correspond to the real needs, e.g., in computer science. That's the most essential lack, which I've found by this time.

Any professor or department which recommends this book to students as the primary, or only text of the class is doing a dis-service to students. The text provides examples and explanations which are incomplete and contain errors. In many of the proofs, key steps are omitted by the author who takes for granted that students will know of his mistakes and make corrections. Any prospective students who see this book as the only text of a computer science discrete mathematics class, should imediately change from that class, saving themselves many hours of aggrevation.

This is probably the worst textbook I've ever had to use. If you don't already know the topics, the book does little to help you learn them. It simply spews theorems and then shows examples (with little explanation). A few simple step-by-step explanations would go a long way to understanding the subject material.