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Greatest Textbooks
A great textbook, must meet several criteria: good exposition
(not too arcane, not too shallow), fun problems, clean typesetting.
These are the my favorite Math/CS books of all time. First my absolute
favorite:
- Concrete Mathematics; Graham, Knuth, Patashnik [Probably the overall
best math text I've ever seen.]
And then the runners-up:
- The Art of Computer Science, vols 1-3; Knuth [Classic, perfect.]
- Combinatorics; van Lint, Wilson [Not for the weak-hearted.]
- Generatingfunctionology; Wilf [Fun approach, fun exposition.]
- Randomized Algorithms; Motwani, Raghavan [Well-written and a cool topic.]
- Analysis of Algorithms; Sedgewick, Flajolet [Important stuff, but not
an introductory text.]
- A First Course in Probability; Ross [Tons of good problems, but lots
of typos.]
- Abstract Algebra; Dummit, Foote [Best algebra text I've seen.]
- Introduction to the Theory of Computation; Sipser [Sipser is a great
expositor, but the book has a lot of typos.]
- Modern Computer Algebra; von zur Gathen, Gerhard [Beautifully
presented, fun topics]
John's Deep Math Thought for the Day: I noticed that at the 762nd decimal
place of
pi there occurs the sequence 999999. Wouldn't this be the logical place
to round off?
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John R. Black /
(jrblack@cs.colorado.edu)