Customer Reviews:
 Great Book March 17, 2008
Sports Car Enthusiast
This was the required textbook for a discrete math course that I took and I think it's a great book. The material we covered was thorough and rigorous but also straightforward to learn.
Good book September 24, 2007
C. Wells
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This product came to me in tack and in good condition. It was well worth the price!
 Adequate, but with one amazing and serious flaw January 11, 2005
Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com))
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There were two things in this book that I found distinctive, one positive and the other negative. In the positive area, the material at the end of the chapters is more thorough than I have seen in any other discrete mathematics book. Chapter reviews are composed of:
*) A summary of the chapter.
*) The notation used in the chapter.
*) A list of the definitions of the new terms used in the chapter.
*) A list of the theorems in the chapter.
*) A sample exam over the chapter.
*) Two lists of projects, one mathematical and the other using computer science.
*) Solutions to the questions in the sample exam.
Quick check problems are scattered throughout the chapter and the solutions to those problems immediately precede the chapter summary material.
On the negative side, the title of the twelfth and last chapter is "Functions, Relations, Databases and Circuits." It baffles me when I see relations and functions relegated to the last chapter. Although relations and functions are not explicitly defined before chapter twelve, they are used throughout the book. Standard functional notation is used throughout chapter four, "Algorithms", and chapter seven, "Recursion." Section 7.2 is "Recurrence Relations" and section 7.4 is "Generating Functions." In my opinion, delaying the definition of a function to page 729 and that of a relation to page 732 is very wrong. If I were to use this book, I would be forced to cover the material at the start of chapter 12 immediately after chapter two, "Set, Logic and Boolean Algebras." Since I would not do that, I will not use this book as a text.
Other than these two features, the coverage is that usually found in a discrete math book. As the title suggests, there is more emphasis on proof than there is in other books, although the extra amount is not that significant. While some proofs are presented in discrete mathematics, it is generally the first course, so the amount of proofs that the students are required to do is less than that in more advanced math courses. Therefore, the presence of more proofs will not sway me towards adopting the book.
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