If the textbook isn't working for him, . . .
1) Look at OTHER textbooks on the subject.
There is even a Schaum's "made easy , "Outline Of Discrete Math" by
Lipschutz.
The title promises more than it can deliver, but it might help get through
some of the more troublesome sections.
2) Seek out other students who had taken that specific course, from that
specific prof.
We used to have a "Computer Math" course. Some of the instructors used a
Discrete Math textbook for it. Instead, I concentrated on things such as
binary representations of negative and floating point numbers, because the
majority of the computer students who showed up for it had been UNAWARE
that anything but positive integers could be expressed in binary!
FOR REAL.
For your amusement: The calculator included in Windoze purports to have a
"Programmer" mode. But within that calculator non-integers do not exist
in the "programmer" mode. Although it does have some 2's complement
negatives.
Even had a few students who had been told in school that "PI is about
3.1416 or 22/7" by teachers who interpreted that to mean (about 3.1416)
or ([EXACTLY] 22/7). and similar, comparable misinformation. That is
apparently STILL being taught!
(60 years ago, I got sent to the principal's office for discipline in 5th
grade for disagreeing with my teacher, and pointing out that since 22/7
was NOT "about 3.1416" (3.142857), why would they say that it was about
3.1416 if it is 3.142857, and that PI was NOT a "rational number" )
So, I'm not the right person for Discrete math.
For a course entitles "computer math", I considered getting competence
with hex, octal, binary, including negatives and floats, to be a higher
priority than the math theory.
I made the students manually calculate the (first 32) bit pattern for PI.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
