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The thing about the beginning of Vol 1 of TAOCP is that it begins with the "mathematical preliminaries" which is among the most difficult things in the book (as
by OskarS 10y ago
The thing about the beginning of Vol 1 of TAOCP is that it begins with the "mathematical preliminaries" which is among the most difficult things in the book (aside from some of the more hard-core analysis). Like, his description of heap-sort in Vol 3. is easy enough to follow, but fuck man, generating functions are hard!
- Jtsummers 10y agoWhich is why my professor and classmate and I switched to Concrete Mathematics about halfway through working through chapter 1. More thorough examination of many of the topics in chapter 1, plus more material.
- _asummers 10y agoMy advisor would always make a joke to his classes, when that book came up, that it had a dual purpose name - - that it was foundational, but also because it's hard as concrete. I used it as reference in some of my math classes but haven't given it a thorough read.
- Jtsummers 10y agoWe worked through about 1/3 of the material starting one summer term (where we started on TAOCP) and finishing sometime in the fall. Definitely hard, but it also helped me finally understand a lot of math that I "knew" but hadn't yet grokked.