Concrete mathematics

What Hacker News says

1. einpoklumJan 2026
   I'm not such a fan of trying to cram everything-mathematically-relevant into a single huge book (and it is huge - 1048 pages).

   Anyway, this reminds me of a rather different initiative in the same vein: The building of Mathematical principles based on the expediences of Computer Science: CONCRETE MATHEMATICS

   by Donald Knuth, Ronald Graham and Oren Patashnik.

   https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/gkp.html

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics

   available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/download/concrete-mathematics/Concrete%2...

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2. kenjacksonJan 2026
   SICP still deserves to be on such lists.

   I also love Concrete Mathematics.

   I prefer the Tanenbaum OS books over Stallings. In particular the design and implementation book, although it is more than a decade old now.

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3. siddbootsNov 2025
   Concrete Mathematics is probably the best single book that you could read to prepare you for some the problems beyond the first 50. It’s extremely fun, and also mathematically serious. A large portion of PE problems are exactly in the cross sections of number theory, combinatorics, and computation that is covered in this book.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics

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4. getnormalityAug 2025
   For anyone wanting to go deeper, Knuth's Concrete Mathematics covers the discrete calculus topics mentioned here (and much more).
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5. smatijaFeb 2025
   The best math book for a software engineer imho is Concrete mathematics by Knuth (of TAOCP fame).

   Problems in it are a bit tough to chew through though.

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6. BrezaFeb 2025
   I suggest picking up Knuth's Concrete Mathematics. It helps you get used to the math in TAoCP as well as his writing style, which manages to be simultaneously rigorous, serious, and humorous.
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