Product Description

Discrete Mathematics and its Applications, Sixth Edition, is intended for one- or two-term introductory discrete mathematics courses taken by students from a wide variety of majors, including computer science, mathematics, and engineering. This renowned best-selling text, which has been used at over 500 institutions around the world, gives a focused introduction to the primary themes in a discrete mathematics course and demonstrates the relevance and practicality of discrete mathematics to a wide a wide variety of real-world applications…from computer science to data networking, to psychology, to chemistry, to engineering, to linguistics, to biology, to business, and to many other important fields.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101078 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

From the Publisher
Accessibility: This text has proven to be easily read and understood by beginning students with no mathematical background beyond college algebra. Once basic mathematical concepts have been carefully developed, more difficult material and applications to other areas of study are presented. There are a few places in the text where calculus is referred to and these places are carefully noted.
Flexibility: This text has been carefully designed for flexible use. Each chapter is divided into sections of approximately the same length, and each section is divided into subsections that form natural blocks of material teaching. The dependence of chapters on previous material has been minimized.
Worked Examples: Thorough attention has been paid to the 650+ examples throughout the text. Many new examples have been added, as well as a focused expansion of key examples. These examples are used to illustrate concepts, relate different topics, and introduce applications. In the examples, a question is first posed, then its solution is presented with the appropriate amount of detail.
Applications: The applications included in this text demonstrate the utility of discrete mathematics in the solution of real-world problems. This text includes applications to a wide variety of areas, including computer science, data networking, psychology, chemistry, engineering, linguistics, biology, business, and the Internet.
Exercises: There are over 3000 exercises in the text. There is an ample supply of straightforward exercises that develop basic skills, a large number of intermediate exercises, and many challenging exercises. Exercises are stated clearly and unambiguously, and all are carefully graded for level of difficulty. Exercises sets contain special discussions, with exercises, that develop new concepts not covered in the text, permitting students to discover new ideas through their own work. Supplementary exercises follow each chapter and provide a rich and varied set of additional exercises. These exercises are generally more difficult than those in the section exercise sets and integrate different topics more effectively.
Computer Projects: Each chapter is followed by a set of computer projects. These computer projects tie together what students may have learned in computing and in discrete mathematics. Computer projects that are more difficult than average, from both a mathematical and a programming point of view, are marked with a star, and those that are extremely challenging are marked with two stars.
Computations and Explorations: A set of computations and explorations is included at the conclusion of each chapter. These exercises are designed to be completed using existing software tools, such as programs that students or instructors have written or mathematical computation packages such as MAPLE or Mathematica.
Writing Projects: Each chapter is followed by a set of writing projects. To do these projects students need to consult the mathematical literature. Some of these projects are historical in nature and may involve looking up original sources. Others are designed to serve as gateways to new topics and ideas. All are designed to expose students to ideas not covered in depth in the text.
Historical Information: The background of many topics is succinctly described in the text. Brief biographies of more than 55 mathematicians and computer scientists are included as footnotes. These biographies include information about the lives, careers, and accomplishments of these important contributors to discrete mathematics. In addition, numerous historical footnotes are included that supplement the historical information in the main body of the text.
Logic: The introduction to logic has been expanded to provide a more accessible approach to beginning students. There are now two sections devoted to quantifiers, specifically addressing the use of quantifiers in expressing statements of various types. Additional background has been supplied to help students translate English and mathematical statements into statements involving predicates and quantifiers. Material has also been added on using logic to express and work with system specifications, directly relating the topic to the computer science field.
Mathematical Reasoning: Coverage of the rules of inference and basic types of proof has been expanded and moved into Chapter 1. This allows students a better understanding of proofs of facts about sets and functions in Chapter 1, and in number theory in Chapter 2. Sequences and summations has been moved to Chapter 3 where it immediately precedes the material on mathematical induction. The presentation of mathematical induction has been enhanced with further explanations and interesting examples.
Probability: Coverage of discrete probability and aspects of probability theory have been expanded and placed in their own chapter. This allows for more thorough coverage of probability while increasing the accessibility to counting techniques.
Web site: This text continues its efforts to support and expand upon the textual material with enhanced coverage of topics on its web site. Features include a detailed Web Resources Guide, Additional Exercises and Answers, a Guide to Writing Proofs, and many other elements. The site will continue its expansion throughout the life of the edition, providing tools that students and instructors can use to assess student's understanding of key topics- including implications, quantifiers, proofs, mathematical introduction, and counting problems. Extensive additional examples in key areas and more detailed explanations of key examples in the text will also be provided.

About the Author
Kenneth H. Rosen is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Laboratories in Middletown, New Jersey. His current assignment involves the assessment of new technology and the creation of new services for AT&T. Dr. Rosen has written several leading textbooks and many articles. Rosen received his Ph.D. from MIT.

Customer Reviews

If you like puzzles, this book is one long 700 page puzzle!
This book was the required text for my discrete mathematics course. The teacher went too fast and made a lot of mistakes, and this book didn't fill in the gaps. The book in general is not laid out well, very boring, and difficul to understand. The examples are not described well and most of the exercise problems bear little resemblance to them. Rather than write a 4th edition of this book, Rosen should've started from scratch. Maybe that way he might come up with something of value. The way you'll learn discrete math from his book is by reading the problems, looking at the answer, and figuring out how the heck he got from point A to the solution. It makes you think, but by far not the best way to learn discrete math... The book's target audience is clearly intended to be college students with the plethora of exercises and answers (with no explaination) to only odd problems, but it is just not a good book. I don't know who would want this book. Only those that know discrete math would be able to make sense of it, but if they already know discrete math they would not want a book with this format. I'd give it 1/2 a star if Amazon.com would let me.

Good introduction to the world of Discrete Mathematics
I read this book for a course in Discrete Mathematics at Aalborg University. Having a backgound with a degree in Software Engineering where the focus was on practical implementation, I found the book a bit hard to read. However every chapter included excercises which made the theory easier to understand for a practician like me.

One of the things that would have made the course easier for me was a brush up on the algebra i had in college. The book uses a lot of basic mathematic notations and if you don't know them you will have a hard time reading the book.

To spice up the load of theory, the book contains some history with biographies of famous mathematicians, some which are quite fun to read.

The companion website for the book was not fully developed, but contained a lot of usefull links.

All in all a good book that does the job.

Not for the uninitiated!
If this book is so great, then why am I trying to find other books to explain this stuff? It's because this book assumes that the student has already studied this material and can fill in the missing steps in the proofs. Not! Yeah, if my two-yr CS 4.0 GPA holds, it will be no thanks to Rosen. Instead, credit will go to self-initiative and books make the next edition relevant to the reader at the student level! You're missing your audience!"