Customer Reviews

Introductory Combinatorics

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

 

 

I used the book to guide me through a Combinatorics class I took in the summer of 1998. The author has presented some very interesting problems like prove that of any 10 points chosen withen an equlateral triangle of side length 1, there are 2 whose distance apart is at most 1/3 that use some interesting techniques such as the pigeonhole principal. The book, however contained too many mistakes. My professor said on average there is one mistake per page and he wasn't exagerating either. Luckily with his help, we corrected the many mistakes and then were successfully able to use the book. I notice that the author has written a new edition. I hope most of the mistakes have been corrected because when I pay a good sum of money for a book I expect it to be good book without errors.

I'm very surprised that this book is in its 5th edition and it still has a many errors. There are even errors in statements of theorems, which is really scary, and many errors in the back of the book where you are supposed to be able to check your answers.

I have very little faith in this textbook. If it weren't in use for my course (and I'm not sure why it is, because I have yet to find its good qualities) I would never have bought it.

Hopefully the publishers hire a math grad student or two for editing the sixth edition.

Most (but not all) of the copious errors in earlier editions have been fixed.

(Brualdi maintains an errata list on his website.) I like this book a lot,

it has a nice, relaxed style of exposition and the choice of topics is good

for an introductory course.

I would not recommend learning from this book. The exposition is very confusing, the exercises contain many mistakes, and the layout is simply painful. I strongly dislike this book.

The author does a decent job explaining combinatorics, but his exercise questions are very vague. This causes problems when trying to do the homework for my class. If you need this book for a class make sure to start the homework early so you can ask your professor for clarification.

*I have only read the first 3 chapters