Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications Description:

Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications review:
2 stars (Just plain confusing...) - This book is pretty useless when it comes to explaining concepts that it attempts to teach. It skips steps and fails to explain how to solve a lot of problems. I usually have to have a math tutor, or the teacher explain the lessons to me, because the 15-page sections in the book seem to get me nowhere. I wouldn't have a problem with discrete math if we had a different textbook.
2 stars (Reasonably good text, very poor student/instructor guides.) - The text itself is brief, but still a good overview of discrete mathematics. The main problem is the student and instructor guides. The answers frequently have errors and problems are not reiterated in the text, so a student or a grader has to flip back and forth between at least two books to make sense of the solutions. Even more frustrating for students is the fact that some problems do not have good answers: the author admits that he cannot solve the problem and refers to answers from other problems instead. This is simply not fair to students who may be struggling with the material.



As a teaching assistant, it is not up to me to select the text books. If it were, I would look for a replacement.
1 stars (Horrid, Painful, and Savage) - This is perhaps the worst book possible for a math class as difficult as this one. The examples assume you know a lot about Discrete Math so the author leaves out required information that you have to deduce. It should be titled "Discrete Math II: Buy The Book, Give Me Your Money, Foreward My Career." He has made mathematics painfully difficult. The solutions manual increases what the textbook has in the answer section by about 5%. All in all, it leaves you with more questions and more confusion. And then this jerk hits you with a ridiculously high price tag. This guy is a criminal, his bowls should be cut out and burned and then fed to him.