Invitation to Discrete Mathematics

One was called Pan Tau. This series was about a bowler hat wearing genius Alphons Urban living under the roof top of his brother's family's house in a Prague suburb. Alphons was an ordinary human. But he had a double: a small doll named Pan Tau which could, when twisting its hat, turn into a real life Alphons lookalike. Pan Tau, of course had suprahuman abilities, and he could play a lot of tricks to the nuisance of his real life equivalent Alphons, who had always a hard time to keep the existance of his mute supranatural lookalike a secret. In particular Alphons' nice and nephew were always amazed by their uncle's "practicality"...... .
Professors Matousek's and Nesetril's book is like Pan Tau -- it always finds the right answer to otherwise intractable (mathematical) problems. Discrete mathematics can be extremely tough at times, but with Pan Tau's little genius incorporated into this book, suddenly Discrete Mathematics turns out to be extremely funny. Anyway, there is nothing but praise to spare for this most brilliant and witty book guiding the reader through the pitfalls of mathematics rendering her/him, like myself, a proficient connoisseur of discrete math.


A witty introduction to discrete mathematics   March 16, 2002
Christian A. Hehn (Hanover, Northern Germany.)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful

If you expect to find only dull books on the subject of discrete mathematics then try this one.
When I was a child there were always the most hilarious Czech TV series on Children's television.

One was called Pan Tau. This series was about a bowler hat wearing genius living under the roof top of his brother's family's house. Pan Tau was an ordinary human. But he had a double: a small doll which could, when twisting its hat, turn into a real life Pan Tau lookalike. Pan Tau two, of course had suprahuman abilities, and he could play a lot of tricks to the nuisance of his real life equivalent, who had always a hard time to keep the existance of his mute supranatural lookalike a secret. In particular Pan Tau's nice and nephew were always amazed by their uncle's "practicality"...... .
Professor Matousek and Professor Nesetril's book is like Pan Tau's double -- as it always finds the right answer to otherwise intractable situations. Discrete mathematics can be extremely tough at times, but with Pan Tau's double's little genius incorporated in this book suddenly Discrete Mathematics turns out to be extremely funny. Anyway there is nothing but praise to spare for this most brilliant book guiding the reader through the pitfalls of mathematics rendering her/him, like myself, a proficient connoisseur of discrete math.


Worst Textbook I've Ever Had   February 14, 2006
J. Theriault (Bristol, CT USA)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful

I had this textbook in my undergraduate Discrete Math course. I have never written an Amazon review but I feel the need to in this case. The reviews I could find deal with the Czech version and are glowing. The English translation is not useful for those who are trying to learn the material for the first time.

1. The text uses analogies and metaphors that don't seem to be translated to English correctly.
2. It is organized as if the lecture was transcribed directly into this book. It is not organized for reading.
3. Possibly the worst thing about this book is that there are virtually no examples. The authors use formal proofs to explain the material.
4. Often the finial pieces of the proofs are "left as an excersize for the reader" (meaning homework at the end of the chapter). Too make matters worse only "hints" are provided at the back of the book and only for selected excersizes.

This is not a book to learn from, even with a very good lecturer I found that referring to this book for topics that were already explained was pointless. The school (Univ of CT) agreed dropping this text in favor of another after only one semester of its use.

To get through the course I ended up finding "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth H. Rosen and I highly recommend it. If you're forced to use "Invitation to Discrete Mathematics" in a course I'd suggest you buy a copy of Rosen's text (even an older edition).