Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications Seventh Edition 7th Edition

I have read "Discrete Mathematics" by Epp, Rosen and Ross which are the three most common discrete math texts that I encounter at university.

Of these three, I would rate Epp's book as my favorite because it has the clearest explanations and is so easy to read that you can't help but feel like you understand all of the content completely. The only failing that Epp's book might have is that it is not as thorough in its coverage of the material as some of the more technical books. I would say that it covers about 90% of the material and leaves out some of the more obscure topics.

Rosen's book would be the most thorough, covering every topic in meticulous detail and offering a jumping point for other texts in cryptography and number theory. Although this book is more complete than Epp's, it is also less readable and requires more effort to get through. Ideally you would use Epp's book to learn the material and then go to Rosen's book for a technical reference.

For those of you who are considering Ross's book, I have one thing to say and that is don't. Although I have read this book and done a lot of the problems in the first 3/4 of the text, this book is neither clear in its explanations like Epp nor is it as complete as Rosen's book. If you are assigned this book for a course, my suggestion would be to buy Epp's book and photocopy the Ross homework problems from a friend's textbook.

Take the advice of someone who has read all three books. If you have to buy just one, then get the Epp book. It is better to understand 90% of the material completely rather than 100% of the material partially.

This textbook could be useful as a workbook, because it has a lot of problems with the answers in the back. If you want some practice and need to know if you are getting the right answers, then this book might be a good choice.

Unfortunately, the instructional portion is quite poor. Space is wasted providing the biographies of different mathematicians. Additionally, the "examples" rarely give insight into how to actually solve the problems.

If you are using this textbook, I recommend doing an Internet search to learn how to actually solve the exercises. There are some good web resources out there that will explain what you need to know to answer the questions in this book.

This was the textbook I needed to buy for my discrete mathematics course at my college. I disregarded all of these negative reviews about this textbook because I figured "How bad could it be?". Boy was I wrong.

This is quite possibly the WORST math textbook I have ever gone through. There is usually about 10 pages worth of text and examples for each section of each chapter within the book. Now when I say that those 10 pages will rarely actually teach you anything, I really mean it. You will need the help of the internet, fellow students, professors, and any other help you can find to understand what is being taught here because the textbook will not help you.

Rosen tries to explain everything the hardest way possible. Things that are simple, he makes them sound like rocket science. You can imagine what that type of teaching does to the hard stuff within discrete math. It is almost as if he wrote it to make himself look good to his peers, and not to teach people the clearest and simplest way to do this type of math.

Absolutely atrocious. Stay far away from this textbook unless you are confident that you have a good professor that doesn't force things to sound/be complicated (like this book does).

I took an accelerated 6 week class on discrete math... and though I've never studied that hard (in my life) the class was very rewarding. My professor earned his PhD under Kolmogorov, and if you know that name then you'll know what I mean that it takes THAT level of a mathemetician in order to explain clearly what this text tries so hard to obfuscate.

I'm a math enthusiast, so I also bought copies of Grimaldi's and Epp's Discrete Math texts, and for this class I also needed to borrow copies of number theory texts for the section on number theory, logic texts for logic, etc. It's kinda sad in the state of things that one has to go to outside sources for so many of these topics... but Rosen makes you do it.

My issues on logic: They don't explicitly tell you that a function P(x,y) holds only for objects placed into the function. There is a problem in the section of nested quantifiers where the function is given as P(x,y) but then the solution uses x and y for something totally different. The book leads you to believe that P(x,y) means "property P holds for 'x' and 'y'" but with a function the property is static and the letters are dynamic. The book explains functions from the perspective that if you see P(x,y) then that property holds for x and y, and the specific problem I'm talking about will lead you astray when applying the logical construction; textbooks should be clear enough that the student doesn't have to go to the teacher on simple concepts like this

My issues truly began in Chapter 3. The pseudo code they use is loosely documented and assumes the reader already knows some programming because the entire section on algorithms was greek to me until a study partner who is a programmer by living gave me a quick crash course in programming that clarified what was going on in each step. The section on Big-O notation could have been simplified if the author simply said "we need to create a function that will be bigger than what is stated, and define 'k' as the beginning value where this is true and 'C' is the total sum of the coefficients that also guarantees this." The book takes a 5-6 page approach that buries this simple concept into obtuse mathematical jargon. I can't stress enough how bad the book covers this. (Epp's text with depictions of graphs that explicitly state the difference between Big-O, Big Omega, and Big-Theta was valuable to clarify this topic.)

Number theory is covered haphazardly, introducing div and mod before discussing the nature of numbers and primes. Div and mod are absolutely essential to number theory but the order of presentation serves only to confuse students. I grabbed a number theory book, "Elementary Number Theory" by David M. Burton and that text covers number theory in a much less confusing light than Rosen's text. (These books should all be in your school's library.)

Another book, suggested by my Professor, was Polya's "How to Solve it." This book locks you into the kind of thinking you need to be doing to handle proofs (and other types of problems.)

In short, if you're REALLY good on your mathematics... like you got > 4.0 in high school you might find my observations wrong. But if you are coming from the other direction, and are rising up to that level... this book just doesn't get you there without a TON of outside help. I suppose if nothing else, this book taught me how to use my library for supplementary materials as not a single chapter went by without a need to find things outside of the text.