Lecturer: Dr A. Mycroft (am@cl.cam.ac.uk)
No. of lectures: 4
This course is a brief introduction to discrete mathematics. It covers core elements of the subject to make the Data Structures and Algorithms course accessible to people who have not seen any significant discrete mathematics before. In particular, it covers topics which are covered in Part I A which are useful for the Data Structures and Algorithms course.
Common mathematical notation.
Sets, tuples, functions.
Relations (e.g. telephone directory) and Graphs (e.g. air routes).
Induction.
Combinations and permutations.
O(f) notation, sorting as example.
Recommended books:
For many people the best advice is simply to read the books in the
Data Structures and Algorithms course. The
book
Lipschutz, S. (1976). Discrete Mathematics. McGraw-Hill
has a good ``solved problems'' approach which may be useful for students
who
have not seen discrete mathematics before.
Those who would like to know much more about discrete mathematics
can try:
Stanat, D.F. & McAllister, D.F. (1977). Discrete Mathematics in Computer Science. Prentice-Hall.
Mattson, H.F. Jr (1993). Discrete Mathematics with Applications. Wiley.
Skvarcius, R. & Robinson, W.B. (1986). Discrete Mathematics with Computer Science Applications. Benjamin/Cummings.
Graham, R.L., Knuth, D.E. & Patashnik, O. (1989). Concrete Mathematics. Addison-Wesley.