Discrete Mathematics
lastmod 2018-08-17created 2014-06-122 edits
Discrete mathematics is the study of discrete mathematical structures, dealing with spaces that are not continuous. It is also called finite mathematics, and computational mathematics when emphasizing its computer science aspect. It mainly deals with concepts belonging to countable sets, such as integers, finite graphs, and formal languages. Discrete mathematics is a foundation of computer science, because the data types handled by computers are discrete. Concepts and notations from discrete mathematics are useful for studying problems and objects in computer algorithms and programming languages.
What is discrete?
Discrete is the opposite of continuous. Discrete things have values that are not continuous, so they can be counted one by one; continuous things are connected all the way through.
Topics in discrete mathematics
- Logic
- Set theory
- Number theory
- Combinatorics
- Graph theory
- Algorithms
- Information theory
- Computability theory, computational complexity theory
- Probability theory
- Linear algebra
- Functions
- Partially ordered sets
- Proofs
- Counting and relations