Textbooks

We do not closely follow any one textbook, and you are not required to buy any textbooks for this unit: this is not a “one chapter of the book per lecture” kind of unit. Instead, your main resources will be the lectures and lecture notes, along with the worksheets, comprehension questions, and solutions.

That said, for students who do like to learn from books, the following ones may be worth checking:

• Kenneth Rosen, Discrete Mathematics and its Applications. This is the standard textbook for first-year university mathematics in many CS departments; the library has some paper copies (all editions work equally well for our purposes). I would not advise buying your own copy unless you really like the book, and if you do, second-hand copies may be available.
• Clive Newstead, An Infinite Descent into Pure Mathematics. This is a textbook on logic, available as a free PDF download in the link above. It might be particularly helpful during the first weeks for those who want a fully written out treatment of some of the detailed parts of logic and proof.
• Lehman, Leighton and Meyer, Mathematics for Computer Science. It is only lightly related to the specific selection of topics we cover in this unit, but it is written by people working at MIT and google who clearly know their maths, and it does cover both some “how to write proofs” and some probability theory. It is also available as a free PDF.
• Joseph Fields, A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Mathematics. A good companion for the first half of this unit, with a lot of details on proof techniques. It is also available as a free PDF.