Customer Reviews

Introduction to Graph Theory (4th Edition)

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

 

 

A great -and gentle - introduction to Graph Theory... clear definitions and examples, great figures, useful exercises, and even some clever quotes. Everything you could ask for - if only all texts were this clear and well-organized. This was my first foray into the topic, and Wilson's text made it enjoyable.

This author has a charming writing style, although he suffers from a mathematician's sense of humor. A light introduction to graph theory, suitable for a beginning undergraduate student. Nothing is covered particularly in-depth, and the more difficult proofs are passed over and left to the reader to find and master. The exercises are very important--many of the most important theorems are hidden in there. This text is suitable for independent study, although an advisor would be helpful simply because the theorems hidden in the exercises make you want to have your homework checked.

A further note on proofs: many of those that the author does include are constructionist, and seem to involve a lot of hand-waving. There are very few rigorous proofs, and a teacher using this book should instruct his or her students in the more formal approach to graph theory proofs. This text could benefit from including more.

On the whole: nice diagrams, good notation, good order of material, and very accessible.

I read this text during an undergraduate combinatorics course after having taken a semester of introductory graph theory.

I have found this book difficult to read because of its lack of examples and theorems.Many famous examples and theorems are left as exercises.Many of them are too difficult for a beginner.The book just state some basic defintion and theorem without examples, and even some proofs of the theorems are not complete.Many algorithms are skipped or illustrated badly.I can give no reason for the beginner to buy this book. I would suggest the reader to see "A first Look At Graph Theory" by John O. Clark

This is a very, very thin introductory work on graph theory.

It loses one star because the section numbering and the chapter numbering aren't aligned correctly. (The section numbers increase monotonically from 1 to N. Chapter breaks are inserted almost randomly as a way of grouping sections.)

It loses another star because it doesn't serve the needs of beginners very well. As a previous reviewer has pointed out, it doesn't contain many examples, and results are often stated with only sketch proofs.

It loses one final star because of its ridiculous price. For the same dollar amount, one could buy a good introductory book (such as Chartrand's "Introduction to Graph Theory"), a Schaum's outline (for solved problems), and a decent high-level book for mathematical depth.

On the positive side, Prentice did print this thing on good paper...