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A Cool Brisk Walk Through Discrete Mathematics
A Cool Brisk Walk Through Discrete Mathematics - and its companion site "allthemath.org" - are completely-and-forever-free-and-open-source educational materials dedicated to the mathematics that budding computer science practitioners actually need to know. They feature the fun and addictive teaching of award-winning lecturer Dr. Stephen Davies of the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia!
256 pages, Paperback
Published May 30, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 8, 2023
This is an amazing book for people that do not know anything about discrete math. I firmly believed that textbooks are terrible at teaching math and YouTube videos are the way to go, but this book felt way more like a YouTube video series than a textbook. This book changes the way that I see using books to learn math. I read this book because I love computer science and wanted a better understanding of math from a computer science perspective. I personally love math and computer science, so this book just feels like it was meant for me.
I love how this book is formatted and written so differently from a normal textbook. The way most textbooks are formatted and written just makes me fall asleep while reading them. The practice exercises at the end of every chapter felt fun and rewarding instead of boring and redundant. The book also does a good job of showing you how this information can be useful instead of just teaching the information. Throughout the entire book, there are real world examples of how everything that is taught can be useful.
I think that this book is perfect for high school students that plan to go into computer science. Nothing in this book is overly complicated and understanding Algebra 2 is probably enough to understand this book. Knowing some concepts from Calculus 1 can make this book more fun, but it really isn’t necessary. I would recommend this book for college students too, but college students can just take a discrete math course which is probably better than reading a book in a couple days. This book is probably the best book I have ever read and I think that if you want to go into computer science, reading and understanding this book is a great way to be prepared for the math seen in computer science.
P.S. There are video resources and a book on more math on the site, link to the site can be found on the first few pages of the book before the chapters and everything.
I love how this book is formatted and written so differently from a normal textbook. The way most textbooks are formatted and written just makes me fall asleep while reading them. The practice exercises at the end of every chapter felt fun and rewarding instead of boring and redundant. The book also does a good job of showing you how this information can be useful instead of just teaching the information. Throughout the entire book, there are real world examples of how everything that is taught can be useful.
I think that this book is perfect for high school students that plan to go into computer science. Nothing in this book is overly complicated and understanding Algebra 2 is probably enough to understand this book. Knowing some concepts from Calculus 1 can make this book more fun, but it really isn’t necessary. I would recommend this book for college students too, but college students can just take a discrete math course which is probably better than reading a book in a couple days. This book is probably the best book I have ever read and I think that if you want to go into computer science, reading and understanding this book is a great way to be prepared for the math seen in computer science.
P.S. There are video resources and a book on more math on the site, link to the site can be found on the first few pages of the book before the chapters and everything.
March 31, 2026
I am a self taught professional in the tech industry. I used this text to teach myself discrete math, the first step on a road toward filling in my comp sci gaps given my humanities background. Some chapters took me weeks to fully internalize and "get," but it was always rewarding. Professor Davies also kindly answered questions I sent over email. In addition to this really helping me begin to fill the math background I needed for more confidence in my programming and CS capabilities, I was surprised to find myself sincerely loving wrestling with the theoretical mathematics presented. I now have a regular practice of engaging with mathematics for a few hours every week, purely for the fun of it. I'm really grateful for Prof Davies' work and teaching, which he shared openly and for free online, and which has touched my life despite me not being a direct student of his.
April 13, 2023
By far the most intuitive and readable book I've ever laid my eyes on about discrete mathematics. Goes through sets, relations, probability, data structures, combinatorics, types of numbers, propositional and predicate logic, and proofs in a way that continues to build upon the other. In addition, putting proofs at the end instead of interspersing the book with it is an excellent choice for readability and understanding, I cannot give enough praise to the formatting and presentation of ideas in this book.
May 19, 2023
Great summary of discrete math and some topics in computing.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews