I have been noticing a number of the higher math textbooks are not suggesting students take particular classes but, instead, have “a certain level of ability or ‘sophistication’ in dealing with mathematical concepts.” The authors of this free combinatorics textbook recommend students obtain that sophistication prior to attempting their discrete mathematics textbook Foundation of Combinatorics with Applications.
Edward A. Bender and S. Gill Williamson were members of the faculty at the University of California San Diego. They have included within each chapter some introductory material to aid students in developing “sone new thought patterns” required for success in the study of combinatorics. They consider their textbook suitable for an introductory course in combinatorics for math and mathematical computer science majors.
Each chapter is available in PDF form and a pre-printed version can be purchased. Self-study students should be glad to hear that the authors have provided a full solutions manual for the first 109 pages of the text and for the odd-numbered exercises on the remaining pages.
Chapter Titles for the Foundation of Combinatorics with Applications
- Preface and Table of Contents
- Part I: Counting and Listing
- Chapter 1: Basic Counting
- Chapter 2: Functions
- Chapter 3: Decision Trees
- Chapter 4: Sieving Methods
- Part II: Graph Theory
- Chapter 5: Basic Concepts in Graph Theory
- Chapter 6: A Sampler of Graph Topics
- Part III: Recursion
- Chapter 7: Induction and Recursion
- Chapter 8: Sorting Theory
- Chapter 9: Rooted Plane Trees
- Part IV: Generating Functions
- Chapter 10: Ordinary Generating Functions
- Chapter 11: Generating Function Topics
- Appendices
- Solutions to Odd Numbered Exercises
- Index
- Solutions Manual
View this Free Online Material at the source:
Foundation of Combinatorics with Applications
