Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

courses.csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#81

Post by bogomipz »

impendia wrote: post #20

This fall I will be teaching the required "Discrete Math for CS course" to about fifty students at the University of South Carolina. Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44. Many of our students are working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, and I don't want to make them pay so much if I can at all help it. Lucky I saw this!! I do have one reservation t…

I appreciate your practical comments. This particular caught my eye:

>"Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44."

This is extortionate. What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300? This is one book of how many a student will need that semester? Are school's getting a piece of this as well? Is this why such a racket is permitted?

Sorry I know its tangential to your original comment but I would be curios to hear anyone's feedback, especially someone from Europe or elsewhere. I wonder if this pricing is specific to the U.S.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#82

Post by ralmidani »

I'm still brushing up on Calc, but may have to learn discrete math on my own, since Harvard Extension School offers discrete and algorithms during the same semester, and I don't want to wait 2 years before I can take algorithms.

To that end, I bought a copy of the 1995 "C Edition" of Foundations of Computer Science by Aho and Ullman. It combines data structures and discrete math into one massive text.

Does anyone have an assessment of that book? Is the combined data structures and discrete math a good approach? Does the book hold up well against more "modern" ones?

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#83

Post by dboreham »

bogomipz wrote: post #81
impendia wrote: post #20

This fall I will be teaching the required "Discrete Math for CS course" to about fifty students at the University of South Carolina. Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44. Many of our students are working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, and I don't want to make them pay so much if I can at all help it. Lucky I saw this!! I do have one reservation t…

I appreciate your practical comments. This particular caught my eye: >"Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44." This is extortionate. What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300? This is one book of how many a student will need that semester? Are school's getting a piece of this as well? Is this why such a racket is permitted? Sorry…

Perhaps those of us who seek to make money from entrepreneurial activities should instead wonder at the business skills of people who are able to extract $300 from their customers for a book?

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#84

Post by raoulj »

beisner wrote: post #3

This book is a really accessible primer on the basics. Much more readable than a lot of other textbooks, which kind of go all-out in terms of rigor rather than present things intuitively. This was one of the textbooks we used in Princeton's introductory CS theory class (COS 340: Reasoning About Computation). The probability section is especially good.

lolhi

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#85

Post by agentultra »

lucb1e wrote: post #69

This document is over 900 pages. How long are you supposed to take to read and understand all of this? And is this really all necessary? On the surface this looks like an insurmountable task with questionable benefits. Don't get me wrong, but in the past 6 years of casual and professional programming, I've needed only a basic understanding of math, the most difficult thing being collision detection in games, and that…

It depends on what you want to achieve. Strong fundamentals in maths gives you the tools to solve big problems. The more ambitious the problem you want to help solve, like say a traffic-control system for a high-speed train network, then the more maths you will need.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#86

Post by babygoat »

dboreham wrote: post #83
bogomipz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your practical comments. This particular caught my eye: >"Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44." This is extortionate. What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300? This is one book of how many a student will need that semester? Are school's getting a piece of this as well? Is this why such a racket is permitted? Sorry…

Perhaps those of us who seek to make money from entrepreneurial activities should instead wonder at the business skills of people who are able to extract $300 from their customers for a book?

"How can I get in on that extorting?"

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#88

Post by jly »

impendia wrote: post #20

This fall I will be teaching the required "Discrete Math for CS course" to about fifty students at the University of South Carolina. Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44. Many of our students are working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, and I don't want to make them pay so much if I can at all help it. Lucky I saw this!! I do have one reservation t…

The textbook prices are ridiculous. I buy a lot of textbooks for personal library/study, and I have found for 'classic' texts that have many editions, going back 2-3 revisions can be super cheap. I have purchased many used from Amazon in great condition for $5-10 that cost $100-200+ new in the latest edition. This might not work for a class, but it's been indispensable for my personal use.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#89

Post by babygoat »

mattmanser wrote: post #64
popcorncolonel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's helpful for truly understanding recursion.

If it's so useful for "truly" understanding it, why do I have to show so many CS educated juniors how to use recursion? Have to point out to them to use it instead of doing crazy nested loops or other stupid solutions to a problem simply solved using recursion? Given that I obviously don't "truly" understand it, having never done a CS degree. I'd posit that most CS students don't truly understand recursion, they just…

You can get a CS degree without understanding induction, and you can understand induction without a CS degree.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#90

Post by jcranmer »

bogomipz wrote: post #81
impendia wrote: post #20

This fall I will be teaching the required "Discrete Math for CS course" to about fifty students at the University of South Carolina. Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44. Many of our students are working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, and I don't want to make them pay so much if I can at all help it. Lucky I saw this!! I do have one reservation t…

I appreciate your practical comments. This particular caught my eye: >"Previously I used Epp's book [1] which in my opinion is an outstanding book but regrettably is $280.44." This is extortionate. What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300? This is one book of how many a student will need that semester? Are school's getting a piece of this as well? Is this why such a racket is permitted? Sorry…

> This is extortionate. What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300? This is one book of how many a student will need that semester? Are school's getting a piece of this as well? Is this why such a racket is permitted?

That is a bit high for textbooks, most textbooks are usually "only" in the realm of $80-160. That said, math textbooks are usually far more expensive than others.

The excuse given for high prices is that there is a strong used book market for college textbooks, as most students sell off their textbooks at the end of the semester, so from the point of view of the publisher, they see only one sale in 5-20. Of course, publishers discovered that the "cure" for this is to release new editions of textbooks with minor updates (most importantly, reorder the questions in the question banks!) every few years to kill off the used textbook market and haven't lowered their exorbitant prices to compensate.

As an undergrad, I did have one semester where my total book costs were about $1000. Most of the semesters, they were more like $500.

Oh, and the prices usually go to lining the publishers' pockets. Not the authors', not the schools'.

Post reply on HN