Concrete Mathematics
The book Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science by Ronald L. Graham, Donald E. Knuth, and Oren Patashnik is one of the standard works of academic computer science.
Content and history
The plant provides the mathematical background, which is required for the analysis algorithms. While some themes of the book are to be found in classical literature on discrete mathematics, the authors do have a hitherto unique access to matter: they explain in the preface that concrete mathematics a mixture of continuous and discrete mathematics ("a blend of continuous and Discrete Mathematics " ) is. In explanations and exercises calculus is often used. The term concrete is also differentiating it from the abstract mathematics.
The book is based on a course that Knuth has held at Stanford in 1970. It extends the introductory chapter in mathematics known Knuth's series The Art of Computer Programming.
Concrete Mathematics stands out for its casual, witty style. The authors reject the supposedly dry style of most mathematics textbooks, so for example, contain the Margins " mathematical Graffiti ": the comments of the first editors of the text and of Knuth and Patashniks students at Stanford.
As with all works of Knuth, readers are invited to report for a reward error in the book, they were " technically, historically, typographically, or politically incorrect ."
Typography
Donald Knuth used the first edition of Concrete Mathematics as a test of the AMS Euler fonts and Concrete Roman.