Handbook

Discrete Mathematics is a rapidly growing area of mathematics with many current and emerging applications. It is the study of mathematical structures that are discrete; in contrast with calculus which deals with continuous change.

The importance of Discrete Mathematics today lies in its numerous practical and relevant applications. It plays an essential role in modelling the natural world (e.g., the genome) and the technological world (e.g., the Internet), and in designing efficient solutions such as Internet routing protocols. It is commonly used in cryptography, computer security, electronic banking, algorithms, theory of computing, telecommunications, web search engines, to mention a few.

Emphasis will be placed on developing techniques and uses in applications. Modelling of processes and phenomena which occur in economics and the physical, environmental and life sciences will be used as a vehicle throughout. Topics to be covered include: combinatorics and counting, proof by induction and recurrence relations, graph theory and networks, matrix arithmetic and Markov chains, logic and finite set theory.