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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1178944
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    scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1178944

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      26 July 1998
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      combinatorics
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      relations
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      matrices
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      basic proof technique
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      There is a long series of introductory textbooks on discrete mathematics, however, the textbook written by Wayne M. Dymàček and Henry Sharp jun. is an outstanding one. The authors consider, at least for all the students in other fields than science and engineering, discrete mathematics as an attractive alternative to the traditional introductory course in mathematics which is based on calculus. They argue that discrete mathematics provide an ideal entree to the study of many important mathematical concepts. Its problems are often easy to understand and interesting to think about, yet even at the beginners level there challenge can be substantial. Concepts like ``recogniztion of pattern'' and ``generalization from special cases'' occur with greater frequency and naturalness than in many other areas of mathematics. One point to add is that idea and practice of the fundamental concept of mathematical proofs can be naturally teached. Presenting the material the authors follow an ``spiral'' approach, which refrains from introducing new definitions, concepts, or extensions until they become critical to the understanding of current material. Beginning with very simple results and techniques, the material progresses in a gentle upward spiral of difficulty toward significant problem-solving and theorem-proving capabilities. The presented material of the texbook is organized in seven chapters. Chapter 0, Introduction, is mainly concerned with providing the basic vocabulary of words and symbols to which the readers were introduced at the pre-college level. Together with Chapter 1, Numbers and Proof, it provides a leisurely but fairly thorough exposure to those common understandings of terms, operations, and ideas upon which the remainder of the textbook depends. Chapter 0 contains the sections: Introduction and Preliminary Examples, Numbers and Sets: Basic terminology, and Structure and Proof. Basic Terminology. Chapter 1 contains the sections: Implication and Contrapositive, Indirect Proof and Prime Numbers, Logical Equivalence and Divisibility, Rationals, Pigeons, and Euclid, Irrationals and One-to-One Correspondence, and Positional Notation and Binary Arithmetic. In Chapter 2, the concept of the basic proof technique of Mathematical Induction is introduced. The material is presented in the following sections: Quantified Statements and Their Negations, Well-Ordering Axiom, Consequences of the Well-Ordering Axiom, Principle of Mathematical Induction, Function and Sequences, and Inductive versus Deductive Logic. Chapter 3 is about Combinatorics. It contains the sections: Sets and Counting, Permutations and Combinatorics, Binominal Theorem, Inclusion-Exclusion, and Generating Functions. Chapter 4 presents a lot of material on Probability and Statistics. In detail, there are sections on Probability Computations, Conditional Probability and Tree Diagrams, Independent Events, Bayes' Theorem, Finite Probability Theory, Random Variables, The Binomial Distribution, and Introduction to Statistics. In Chapter 5, Relations and Matrices are considered. The chapter provides sections on Zero-One Matrices, Matrix Operations, Special Matrices, Relations and Boolean Arithmetic, Transitivity and Orderings, and Equivalence Relations. The final Chapter, Chapter 6, is about Graph Theory, and presents material on Introduction to Graph Theory, Subgraphs and Walks, Graphs and Matrices, Isomorphism in Graph Theory, Eulerian Graphs, Trees, Digraphs, Tournaments, and Networks, and An Application in Geometry. Each chapter starts with highlighted overview and is interrupted by ``Tutorial Boxes''. These contain several questions which require a mix of routine calculations with extensions or proofs and are intended both to confirm and to reinforce the understanding of the presented material. Another interesting feature are so-called ``Complements'' which append most sections. Here an important idea of the current section is discussed but at a level somewhat in advance of the main text. The aim is to broaden the horizons of interested readers and ignite enthusiasm for further study of discrete mathematics. Each chapter contains some historical asides and finishes with an extended problem site. Answers to the tutorials and solutions to selected problems are given at the end of the textbook. Beside of these solutions the appendix gives an index, an index of names and an index of symbols together with references and tables of selected values of the binomial probability distribution, and the first thousand primes, respectively.
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