Customer Reviews

Discrete Mathematics Using a Computer

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Discrete Mathematics Using a Computer is the best book I have seen so far when studying how to use the elegance of discrete mathematics (for example: list comprehension, recursion, sets, relations, trees) in programming. The book is exceptional in showing how you can transform mathematical thoughts into the functional programming language HASKELL without loosing the expressiveness of the mathematical formulation. The book shows how to write two- ore three-liners of compact, readable code that implements algorithms (like tree traversal) that usually takes at least a page or two of ugly "for-if-loop-code" in languages like C++ or Java. There are chapters on important applications of the proposed concepts for the design of digital circuits and for
AVL Trees. The text clearly shows the strengths of functional programming compared to imperative programming (Java, C, ...) for many programming tasks and it helps the programmer to better choose his tools.
Finally, the book contains clever and helpfull exercises with many answers. The book has a website providing dedicated code (HASKELL) for the examples.

This book purports to be a college text for discrete math. It is terrible. There aren't nearly enough examples in the book. Explanations are woefully brief, giving one sentence to the definition of a set intersection, for example. Many new concepts sneak up on you without ever being discussed. In one instance it started using a point by point proof method without ever introducing that method. The rules given in some proofs are not defined earlier, leaving the reader to wonder what the authors are doing in their proof. The use of Haskel is another downside. There is no way to check your proofs aside from the proof checker software included which will drive a person to complete insanity. The software is so terribly picky in its syntax, you take more time verifying your proof than actually coming up with it. When there are errors with your syntax, it doesn't give a meaningful message. This is more the fault of Haskel, however. Nevertheless, it is the fault of the authors to choose this terrible method for teaching. Garbage.