Discrete Mathematics

That revived pedagogical entity called discrete mathematics appears surrounded by a mist of uncertainty and some confusion. Three recent articles [5,7,9] have debated the nature, purpose, and relative importance of this subject, but there the experts could not even agree on the adjective discrete [9, p. 3971, some substituting the words finite [9, p. 3971, algorithmic [9, p. 3871, or combinatoric [9, p. 3971 in similar contexts. A certain agreement exists, however, although not unanimity, on some essential aspects of discrete mathematics. Briefly described, discrete mathematics brings together several standard mathematical topics into a new course, which introduces students at about the sophomore level to a broad spectrum of mathematics of which some modern applications either require a computer for their solution or pertain to computer science directly. Far from excluding each other, discrete mathematics and calculus complement each other, both from a mathematical perspective and from an applied point of view.