Neppit

Mathematics

Maths are an important part of programming (although sometimes it doesn't seem like it). What maths are you studying?

I'm currently reading Concrete Mathematics by GKP as a primer for reading TAOCP. Concrete Mathematics is a really fun book so far, although I found the exercises for Ch1 very difficult. I was pretty happy with being able to understand the warmup problems. I think that as I get further into the book I'll go back and look at the problems again. I haven't done much math in the last few years so I'm hoping that I'm just out of practice.

I'm planning to start Apostol's Calculus in the next few days. I've heard that it takes a rigorous approach to Calculus, similar to Spivak. But Apostol is supposed to be better for someone with a computing background, which is why I picked it over Spivak.

I've looked at Spivak in the past, even the first chapter was pretty difficult for me.

I finished Ch2 of Concrete Mathematics today. I was able to do the Warmup exercises without too much difficulty, but the Basics exercises seem quite difficult. Question 12 dealt with a permutation of Z, but even looking at the solution I don't understand one of the steps behind it.