Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Discrete Mathematics (Schaum's)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Did you get stuck with a textbook (like Richard Johnsonbaugh's Discrete Mathematics - Fourth Edition) for your university Computer Science/ Discrete Mathematics course that just doesn't explain the concepts you're trying to learn? I definitely encourage you to purchase this book. However, along with this book you should also buy "2000 Solved Problems in Discrete Mathematics" in Schaum's Solved Problems Series. While the book I'm reviewing here has some problems and solutions, this additional book provides many variations of these problems, allowing you to look at problems from the different angles that will probably show up on your next exam.

Discrete mathematics, or the study of finite systems, has become increasingly important for students of computer science, and this book is a good foundational text on the subject. This Schaum's outline is much more complete than the average Schaum's, and it is also very clear and instructive. It is not just a good text for discrete mathematics. It also covers the basics of abstract algebra and the basics of the theory of computation.
The first 3 chapters cover sets, relations, functions, and algorithms, including a very good section on the complexity of algorithms. Chapter 4 is on logic and propositional calculus, which is the foundation of artificial intelligence and digital logic. The next three chapters cover the basics of vectors, matrices, counting (permutations and combinations), and probability theory. This material is important in the design and analysis of operating systems. Next are chapters on graph theory, directed graphs, and binary trees, all of which should be covered in any good course on the analysis of algorithms. These chapters include discussions of planarity, traversibility, minimal paths, and Warshall's and Huffman's algorithms. There is a chapter on languages and machines that includes material on regular expressions, automata, Turing machines, and computable functions. There is also a chapter dedicated to the very basics of abstract algebra, and another chapter on boolean algebra.
This text is therefore a superset of what you will probably find in an upper level undergraduate class in discrete mathematics, and is definitely a book you want to keep around especially if you are a computer science student and need additional study material for your core courses of artificial intelligence, analysis of algorithms, operating systems, and theory of computation. Highly recommended.

I bought this book to help me survive my Discrete Math class, and ended up thoroughly disappointed. It's just too simple to be of any use. The examples it goes over are the obvious ones I've never had any trouble with, but more involved problems or complex proofs are nowhere to be found in the text. In the end I ended up relying on my course text much more than this, and I already had that book to begin with.

If you are reading this review, then chances are you are taking or preparing to take a Discrete Mathematics course. I feel your pain. There's no way around it, Discrete Mathematics is tough stuff. There is hope though. This reference book can be a huge life saver. Now don't get the wrong idea. It will not solve all your problems or give you the test answers, but it will provide additional examples to problems that make your head spin and hopefully help the light bulb to come on.

I passed Discrete Mathematics with an A and I have no doubt this book helped.

This is a very helpful outline whether you are taking the class and need a supplement or are just trying to learn the material on your own. The writing is clear and succinct, and there are hundreds and hundreds of practice problems all of which are answered. The topics covered are standard for the topic, so this book will cover everything in your class unless your teacher has some unorthodox lesson plan. My one caveat is that there are occasional errors in the answer keys. This can be frustrating especially if you don't feel confident in your own work. The errors are far and few between for the most part and if you can live with them then you will get much use out of this book. Highly recommended.

This book may be the best book for learning about discrete mathematics.

I have many books about discrete mathematics but none covers and exactly explain the subjects as well as this book does.

I would recommend this to everyone who follows a course in discrete mathematics.

I was hoping to get more examples to supplement the Rosen book, but I was very disappointed when one of the first topics that I looked up had information contrary to the text book. Upon further research, I discovered that the Rosen book was right and this one was wrong. I tried other topics too, but the examples didn't seem any better than the text book or what you can find online for free.

This book is great; I have learned a lot from it. Plenty of examples. Highly recommended from me.

this is book is may be better than the expensive once.
I haven;t finished it yet but I can clearly understand the concept and even more.

This book can pull you out of confusion. After all, an abstract course in discrete structures which is supposed to be the fundamentals of learning computer hardware and software programming need not be made even more confusing. Grab this book and make learning discrete structures more enjoyable and less painful !