Material Detail

The focus of this textbook is on applying discrete math techniques from the two broad component areas of discrete math, namely combinatorics or enumerative techniques, and graph theory.

To that end, algorithmic thinking figures prominently in this course. Designing algorithms, particularly algorithms applied to networks, involves the use of graph theory methods. Implementing algorithms requires a careful understanding of logical structures, and usually a top-down implementation approach, beginning with a specifications description, and then proceeding to a pseudocode implementation and finally a language-dependent coding implementation. Moreover, analyzing the complexity of algorithms requires knowledge of functions, the growth of functions, and counting techniques from the combinatorial analysis. Similarly, mathematical induction and recursive definitions are used in a cohesive way to understand algorithms and the options in implementing these recursively versus iteratively.