Handbook

Discrete Mathematics is an area of mathematics directly applicable to both practical and theoretical aspects of computer science. It is the study of mathematical structures that are inherently 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 mathematical techniques in the context of computing. Modelling of processes and phenomena which occur in computing and the sciences will be used as a vehicle for learning and applying the mathematics throughout the course. Topics to be covered include: proof by induction and recurrence relations, graph theory and networks, matrix arithmetic, logic, Boolean algebra, algorithms and finite set theory.