concrete maths
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Firstly I was dissapointed, as there was nothing to do with concrete in this book, but I've got to hand it to the authors, there was loads of maths in it. And some very good maths too, but my only gripe with this side of the book is that the basics were not fully explained, things like times tables for example, missing! It's like a book without pictures. But as the dictionary proved, a book without pictures can be fun. Go buy!
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Fills in some crucial gaps, for sure
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So you've done an undergraduate degree course in maths. So you want to take it further. But all the books you can find either go at light speed or are written like koans.
Not this one - goes for some really heavy and contemporary maths and does it completely accessibly. I never thought I'd be studying hypergeometric functions this side of 90 - but here they are in all their glory.
Yes it's tough, goodness it's tough, but nowhere near as tough as I'd expected it to be for the concepts being covered.
Oh, and it covers the Stern-Brocot tree which I thought I'd invented, took it to my Number Theory tutor and she'd (a) never heard of it and (b) didn't believe it. They take a handful of pages over it, and that's it, done and dusted.
*This* is the way to write a maths book.
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Well worth the effort
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Unless you're very used to this type of mathematics, this book will, as other reviewers comment, prove hard work. However, even someone with little formal maths background like myself can get a lot out of it. It's beautifully written and well-presented, and on the whole the pacing is OK, although sometimes it goes much too fast for casual reading. Once I've made my way through it, I suspect it will make a very useful reference book too; it's full of useful techniques for solving real-world problems, at least if you work in a field that sometimes requires you to solve recurrences and work with tricky integer functions. Although often corny, the marginalia do give you something of the feeling of being on a course, rather than just reading a textbook. As well as daft jokes, there are hints as to the relative importance of some sections (including "skip this bit on first reading" as well as "this is the critical part" -- both kinds very helpful).
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Excellent
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This book is not light reading, but it's worth it. It has most value as a reference tool, and covers well some areas of maths which are important to CS. Moreover, the information is presented in a light-hearted way, with lots of inline jokes (mainly very corny) and margin notes from students who took the lecture course behind the book. The examples tend to help, and there are plenty of exercises with worked solutions. Also lots of references to the primary literature.
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It's a hard ONE!!!
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Well, I love Knuth, I think he is a genius... Anyway, the problem is that he is a hard genius. I have High School Mathematics Knowledge because I'm in the first year of college studying Software Enginneering. Anyway, this book is just great, with examples, jokes (when appropriate) and alot of Mathematical tricks but do not think it's easy to read it (well, at least I didn't found it easy to read...). But the money I paid for it is worthy. I liked the book and advise you it if you want a some good problems to solve (or not...)... Good luck!!! ;)
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