6 ms·

Discrete Mathematics and Functional Programming

114 points by cfeduke 12y ago

mewwts 12y ago
Wish I could've done a course like this in college! I suspect it would bridge a lot of missing gaps from my maths education.
- ericcumbee 12y ago
  Did you take a Discrete Mathematics course at all? At Georgia Southern Discrete Mathematics is a required course for all IT and CS Majors. Struggling with my other math classes (College Algebra, Survey of Calc) that class created a good bit of anxiety for me, until I actually got into and realized to me at least it was not like any of the other math classes.
  - mewwts 12y ago
    Did a bunch of it. Had a blast. But our CS courses were object oriented stuff in Java. Useful, but not very 'mathy' imho.
- madsravn 12y ago
  I just had a course about functional programming and proof theory in Coq. It's super fun and super enlightening. If you are into that kind of thing, you should definitely give it a try!
glutamate 12y ago
See also "The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming" which seems to cover similar material, although not as much. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ I am still waiting for someone to do this for applied maths.
- irickt 12y ago
  Available here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.137.9312&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.137...
luxbock 12y ago
The book appears to be available as a PDF at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115.9659&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115...
- cfeduke 12y ago
  The PDF is from 2006 and contains 231 pages. The printed book is from 2012 and contains 670 pages (including index). I bought a used copy of the book from Amazon for $27.
  - kendallpark 12y ago
    Are you a current student?
    - cfeduke 12y ago
      No, I often buy used text books when I find them cheap so I can fill in what I missed by skipping out on a degree. I have a separate title on discrete math (Epp) but its companion only had some solutions to exercises available in a separate $60 [used] book. I found this title and figured that with the intersection of ML and discrete math I'd have better luck. (Staring at a ton of problems in a text book without knowing which ones I'd be able to verify my solutions against - the Epp book - was a daunting prospect for self-study).
- j2kun 12y ago
  The tables of contents look somewhat different. For example, the linked version in your comment does not include a chapter on Complexity classes.
tsm 12y ago
I too took this course as a freshman, and it was one of the most enlightening things I've ever done for my software engineering career. It's worth getting the most recent copy--it has a lot of corrections and entire new chapters on interesting things (automatons, lambda calculus, lattices, graphs...) Let me know if you have any questions about its content or my experience.
- bvinicius 12y ago
  There is a way on buy an digital copy (no US citizen here) of this book (new edition)? Don't find any in Google/Amazon.
  - tsm 12y ago
    There's one for sale here: https://www.redshelf.com/book/16734/discrete-mathematics-and-functional-programming-9781590282663-thomas-vandrunen https://www.redshelf.com/book/16734/discrete-mathematics-and...
    - bvinicius 12y ago
      Thanks :)
technologia 12y ago
Just a note "I am produce a series of videos to accompany the text" was bugging me. Its nice that this is available for their students.
- kendallpark 12y ago
  You should let a current student know about that. I think he still gives extra credit for mistakes.
kendallpark 12y ago
I took this course as a freshman CS Major at Wheaton College and helped edit Dr. VD's textbook. He used to give extra credit for finding typos in his book. I got a bad grade on one of the exams and then came to him the next week with 20+ corrections to his book. It was a great course and VanDrunen is one of the best profs I've ever had.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
quiqie 12y ago
Really great book! I took this course as a sophomore and wish I had as a freshman as the ideas and themes presented in the book and course are so integral to forming proper thinking in the subject of programming.
cmancini 12y ago
Fun to see this here. I TA-ed for this course--one of my favorite undergrad classes. I highly recommend picking up the full book. The merging of proof and program is really cool as a way to teach CS concepts. I'm actually working on porting a lot of the examples over to idiomatic Clojure. Email me if you're interested in following the progress there.
- d_e_s 12y ago
  You were my TA! I emailed Dr. VanDrunen to let him know that he was on HA.

114 points by cfeduke 12y ago

Wish I could've done a course like this in college! I suspect it would bridge a lot of missing gaps from my maths education.

ericcumbee 12y ago
Did you take a Discrete Mathematics course at all? At Georgia Southern Discrete Mathematics is a required course for all IT and CS Majors. Struggling with my other math classes (College Algebra, Survey of Calc) that class created a good bit of anxiety for me, until I actually got into and realized to me at least it was not like any of the other math classes.
- mewwts 12y ago
  Did a bunch of it. Had a blast. But our CS courses were object oriented stuff in Java. Useful, but not very 'mathy' imho.
madsravn 12y ago
I just had a course about functional programming and proof theory in Coq. It's super fun and super enlightening. If you are into that kind of thing, you should definitely give it a try!

glutamate 12y ago

See also "The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming" which seems to cover similar material, although not as much. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/ I am still waiting for someone to do this for applied maths.

irickt 12y ago
Available here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.137.9312&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.137...

luxbock 12y ago

The book appears to be available as a PDF at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115.9659&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115...

cfeduke 12y ago
The PDF is from 2006 and contains 231 pages. The printed book is from 2012 and contains 670 pages (including index). I bought a used copy of the book from Amazon for $27.
- kendallpark 12y ago
  Are you a current student?
  - cfeduke 12y ago
    No, I often buy used text books when I find them cheap so I can fill in what I missed by skipping out on a degree. I have a separate title on discrete math (Epp) but its companion only had some solutions to exercises available in a separate $60 [used] book. I found this title and figured that with the intersection of ML and discrete math I'd have better luck. (Staring at a ton of problems in a text book without knowing which ones I'd be able to verify my solutions against - the Epp book - was a daunting prospect for self-study).
j2kun 12y ago
The tables of contents look somewhat different. For example, the linked version in your comment does not include a chapter on Complexity classes.

tsm 12y ago

I too took this course as a freshman, and it was one of the most enlightening things I've ever done for my software engineering career. It's worth getting the most recent copy--it has a lot of corrections and entire new chapters on interesting things (automatons, lambda calculus, lattices, graphs...) Let me know if you have any questions about its content or my experience.

bvinicius 12y ago
There is a way on buy an digital copy (no US citizen here) of this book (new edition)? Don't find any in Google/Amazon.
- tsm 12y ago
  There's one for sale here: https://www.redshelf.com/book/16734/discrete-mathematics-and-functional-programming-9781590282663-thomas-vandrunen https://www.redshelf.com/book/16734/discrete-mathematics-and...
  - bvinicius 12y ago
    Thanks :)

technologia 12y ago

Just a note "I am produce a series of videos to accompany the text" was bugging me. Its nice that this is available for their students.

kendallpark 12y ago
You should let a current student know about that. I think he still gives extra credit for mistakes.

kendallpark 12y ago

I took this course as a freshman CS Major at Wheaton College and helped edit Dr. VD's textbook. He used to give extra credit for finding typos in his book. I got a bad grade on one of the exams and then came to him the next week with 20+ corrections to his book. It was a great course and VanDrunen is one of the best profs I've ever had.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

quiqie 12y ago

Really great book! I took this course as a sophomore and wish I had as a freshman as the ideas and themes presented in the book and course are so integral to forming proper thinking in the subject of programming.

cmancini 12y ago

Fun to see this here. I TA-ed for this course--one of my favorite undergrad classes. I highly recommend picking up the full book. The merging of proof and program is really cool as a way to teach CS concepts. I'm actually working on porting a lot of the examples over to idiomatic Clojure. Email me if you're interested in following the progress there.

d_e_s 12y ago
You were my TA! I emailed Dr. VanDrunen to let him know that he was on HA.