Cheap Discrete Mathematics (5th Edition) (Book) (Richard Johnsonbaugh) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Discrete Mathematics (5th Edition)

By advanced topics, I mean things that you'll likely encounter in computer science theory. This is essentially what discrete math is for, so this is important. The discussions on recursion, analysis of computational complexity, recurrence relations, and especially proof by contradiction and induction are all too short, too abrupt, and too weak. Though examples are provided, they are too simple and do little to bring you to actual understanding of these difficult concepts. There are titanic tracts about cycles, paths, and all sorts of algorithms to deal with these. While interesting and often useful, this isn't what I was looking for. The author should really have focused more on the discrete math, leaving the interesting algorithms to data structure textbooks.

I should probably note here that I've already learned all of this material and was using this book as a reference. Even then, it was still difficult to figure out what the author was doing! I wouldn't even recommend the text to someone intending to use it purely for review, and would warn those with no knowledge of the subject to steer well clear.

Par Exposition and Expensive
I used this book for a one semester course on discrete mathematics. First for the bad points: This book is unnecessarily expensive. 1/3 of almost every page is left blank and has unnecessary text and pictures. If there is one thing a poor college student doesn't need is an expensive book. I've read through the majority of the reviews here. Most of them stress that the book is difficult to follow. Indeed, some proofs and examples are difficult to follow (unless you have the intuition of a genius). The author's exposition of the material is not bad, but not good either.

I'm currently trying to solve some of the more interesting problems in the book from each chapter. I must say though, some problems are INCREDIBLY challenging. I've been through many instances where I've required outside help to solve some problems.

Conclusion: I don't recommend buying this book. It's too expensive and its exposition of the subject is at most average.

Nasty
This book is a required text used by the university I attend in an introductory discrete mathematics subject. I had little to no difficulty following the notes given during lectures, but when I wanted to brush up on/practice certain topics I found this book to be nothing more than confusing. I can only recommend buying a supplementary text if you find yourself doing a course on this topic and this being the required text.