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Comment by pooya72 | Hacker News Reader

I'm just a hobby programmer, but I've been looking to learn discrete math so I can get in to algorithms. Is this a good book? I've seen a lot of people recommend Epp's Discrete Mathematics with Applications. I've kind of been holding off the topic until I really hit a wall and discover what/how much I need to learn. Any advice would be great.

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I just took a look at it and I think for self teaching this might be a great alternative to Rosen’s DMwA. Mainly because this book offers interactive Questions and Answers at the end of each section. Pair the book with an MIT OCW math for computer science or something similar and you should be more than good. Best of luck!

Thanks! Nice username.

Idk about the interactive thing.

Personally having a bunch of fancy tools like that makes it harder to keep a flow of (try problem, get it wrong, figure out why, repeat) but I guess I’ve never tried that with a math book. In college I always found it was best to study math with a dumb pdf and a notebook.

Let me use the, 'What programming language should i start with?!' analogy :)

Just start reading the book (any discrete mathematics book!) :)

Or to put it mathematically, the optimal amount of exploration time in this explore/exploit problem is far less than you might think.

Actually, having gone through multiple programming books, I disagree with that. I highly recommend HTDP because of their design recipes. The book shows you an approach to solving problems with programs rather than just the syntax of a language. This book has had the largest impact on my (very humble) approach to programming.

I get the following error:

  Error on line 1. Unspecified reference named 'HTDP' 
  in the expression 'I highly recommend HTDP'

Any help?

Clever!

https://htdp.org/

I'd disagree. They're better off getting some feedback on books that might appeal to their learning style and background better. Otherwise they may tire quickly and not learn well-enough.

This is a 400 page book. Very likely overkill for what you intend to do. Many algorithms books contain the necessary discrete math prerequisites, so I'm not sure you should go with this book.

I have read Sussane's book and it's really good.

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