Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, 2nd Edition

Preface

“Audience, level, and treatment—a description of such matters is what prefaces are supposed to be about.”

—P. R. Halmos [173]

This Book is Based on a course of the same name that has been taught annually at Stanford University since 1970. About fifty students have taken it each year—juniors and seniors, but mostly graduate students—and alumni of these classes have begun to spawn similar courses elsewhere. Thus the time seems ripe to present the material to a wider audience (including sophomores).

It was a dark and stormy decade when Concrete Mathematics was born. Long-held values were constantly being questioned during those turbulent years; college campuses were hotbeds of controversy. The college curriculum itself was challenged, and ...