This clearly written and enlightening textbook provides a concise, introductory guide to the key mathematical concepts and techniques used by computer scientists. Topics and features: ideal for self-study, offering many pedagogical features such as chapter-opening key topics, chapter introductions and summaries, review questions, and a glossary; places our current state of knowledge within the context of the contributions made by early civilizations, such as the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks; examines the building blocks of mathematics, including sets, relations and functions; presents an introduction to logic, formal methods and software engineering; explains the fundamentals of number theory, and its application in cryptography; describes the basics of coding theory, language theory, and graph theory; discusses the concept of computability and decideability; includes concise coverage of calculus, probability and statistics, matrices, complex numbers and quaternions.
From the reviews:
"This book provides a mathematical context for computing. ... Each chapter concludes with a summary and a series of review questions that reinforce the concepts presented. This is all very readable and self-contained, making the book an excellent resource for most academic libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate students and informed general audiences." (D. Z. Spicer, Choice, Vol. 50 (11), July, 2013)
"This book provides a mathematical context for computing. ... Each chapter concludes with a summary and a series of review questions that reinforce the concepts presented. This is all very readable and self-contained, making the book an excellent resource for most academic libraries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All undergraduate students and informed general audiences." (D. Z. Spicer, Choice, Vol. 50 (11), July, 2013)
"This book, authored by a prolific writer, is about the applications of mathematics in computing and places emphasis on historical contexts where applicable. Aimed at undergraduate students of computer science, the book provides helpful pedagogical features: key topics covered in each chapter are listed at the beginning ... . The book achieves its objective of providing a flavour of the mathematics used in computing, so the general reader will likely benefit from it as well." (David J. Littleboy, SIGACT News, Vol. 55 (1), 2024)