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Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

courses.csail.mit.edu

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Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#91

Post by mindcrime »

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…

There are a number of freely available online resources for proofs & mathematical reasoning. Besides the already mentioned "Book of Proof", try:

https://sites.google.com/site/mathematicalreasoning3ed/

http://www.math.vt.edu/people/day/ProofsBook/

http://giam.southernct.edu/GIAM/

For anybody looking for freely available maths related texts online, three great resources are:

http://aimath.org/textbooks/approved-textbooks/

http://web.archive.org/web/20170126161813/http://people.math...

http://www.openculture.com/free-math-textbooks

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#92

Post by mljoe »

pasbesoin wrote: post #42
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…

$280??!! I knew prices were "high", but good grief! I guess I really am out of touch. Glad I held onto my vintage copy. Don't imagine the intervening 20-ish years have added circa $200 (at a guess) of value to the latest edition.

Textbook prices and college costs in general are amongst the most notable products outpacing inflation.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> What is the justification for a book being priced at nearly $300?

It's a product of a capitalist, for-profit producer. The justift for its price is that the market will bear it.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#95

Post by hyporthogon »

This is awesome, thanks.

Obligatory 'zoomout' recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Content-Methods-Meaning-V..., which I learned about from HN (http://hackernewsbooks.com/book/mathematics-its-content-meth...). Wish I had read/pondered this before grad math classes.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#96

Post by Sean1708 »

llzes wrote: post #23
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…

You're the type of professor everyone wishes they had. That's so phenomenal you're looking out for your students like this. That and if you end up writing supplementary material for the book.

Is it an American thing to force your students to buy textbooks? In Britain (at least at the universities that I know about) there tends to be 2 or 3 recommended texts, of which the library will have several copies, and they're meant for reference when you get stuck rather than learning the entire course.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#98

Post by crazygringo »

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 mean by "read and understand".

My approach with something like this is to breeze through it a first time, just to understand the main point of each section and how it all fits together. If you spend 30s/page on average (obviously there will be a lot of variation), that's 7.5 hrs -- two mornings, afternoons, or evenings.

And for most people, that will provide 90% of the value. And you know what to look up, where, when you need it in the future. And you also know whatever part you might be personally interested in more, and you can go back and read those sections in more detail.

This approach works well with all types of non-fiction, and it can actually be really helpful to first "skim" through every non-fiction book you read, before reading in detail -- knowing in advance where the author is going can often help remove a lot of confusion.

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#99

Post by reducesuffering »

Sean1708 wrote: post #96
llzes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the type of professor everyone wishes they had. That's so phenomenal you're looking out for your students like this. That and if you end up writing supplementary material for the book.

Is it an American thing to force your students to buy textbooks? In Britain (at least at the universities that I know about) there tends to be 2 or 3 recommended texts, of which the library will have several copies, and they're meant for reference when you get stuck rather than learning the entire course.

At UC Irvine, almost all CS classes have either: free online textbooks, just suggested textbooks to help read along with the class, or a PDF that is widely distributed between students themselves. Most students end up never buying a $200 CS textbook

Re: Mathematics for Computer Science [pdf]

#100

Post by mattmanser »

gjm11 wrote: post #78
mattmanser wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why would you spend weeks doing proof by induction? Looking it up, I think I did that when I was 16, but I've never used it while programming. I can't see a single benefit to knowing it for programming. Been programming professionally for 12 years now. What am I missing? Why do you think it's important?

In some sorts of code, you can get a lot of mileage from "loop invariants" and "loop variants". Understanding these is more or less the same as understanding proof by induction. Whether you are missing anything depends on whether you ever write the sort of code that benefits from this. (Even if you do, you still might not be missing anything. You might be comfortable with loop invariants but not have connected them w…

I'm afraid you're not very good at explaining yourself, I've no idea what point you're trying to make.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but any moderately complex LOB CRUD app usually has a large amount of far more complex algos than a binary sort. Your off-hand comment shows a total ignorance of what's involved in writing a LOB CRUD web app.

In my experience, algos are the really easy part of programming. The hard part is managing complexity.

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