A Student's Guide to the Study, Practice, and Tools of Modern Mathematics (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications) 1st Edition

Although this is ostensibly a "student guide" and does cover a lot of basics in the first section on proofs and paper writing, etc., the second section is a wonderful, current review of all the best commercial and freeware in creating math courses, tutorials, papers and even web pages. The publisher is a little weird in that they mention Linux as free, then promote Mathematica, Maple and even Matlab, but completely fail to mention GNU Octave, even though these authors cover it very well.Octave is rapidly becoming the "go to" free resource competing with the expensive MatLab. Both are command line GUIs, and Octave, though born as a chemistry sim, is now a fully functional CAS and modeling sim with all the features of the $5,000 programs, including finding roots, linear algebra, and many others.I'm an engineer and mathematician who uses animation tools at classpros and shaderjoes to create math tutorials, including manifolds, Lie algebras, PDE's and many others. You can surf the web for current math programs, but this book is well worth the expense in comparing and contrasting all the major programs, then showing you how to use them together, right to the LaTex in your tutorials, courses and papers and the Beamer in your Powerpoints! VERY professor and teacher friendly. And YES, it covers Octave extensively, giving examples both of command line solutions and colorful graphic output.The book also is non trivial in its coverage of LaTex, for example, as even Kindle has trouble translating many Greek symbols, especially in advanced notation systems like Physics, which can really vary in use of symbols. Yes, if you're a student this will really help you pick up real skills with many different current tools, but even more so if you're presenting professionally as a tutor, teacher, professor, tutorial creator or any kind of STEM educator. The authors also are generous with their website and communications in updating you on newer releases and competing freeware and open source tools that are more recent. Highly recommended, but not just for students-- pros will dig it too!Library Picks reviews only for the benefit of Amazon shoppers and has nothing to do with Amazon, the authors, manufacturers or publishers of the items we review. We always buy the items we review for the sake of objectivity, and although we search for gems, are not shy about trashing an item if it's a waste of time or money for Amazon shoppers. If the reviewer identifies herself, her job or her field, it is only as a point of reference to help you gauge the background and any biases.

Required for a college course

I can't comment as this was a mistaken buy. So returned then same day. Probably great for those who really did want this book.