How to Prove It: A Structured Approach (Revised) HOW TO PROVE IT: A STRUCTURED APPROACH (REVISED) BY Velleman, Daniel J.( Author ) on Mar-01-2006 Hardcover

* PhysicalThis book has 384 pages printed in B&W printed on good quality paper.* Target audience, A-level / H.N.D. Undergraduate / Graduate / Postgraduate?In my case this book would be helpful to those studying (some) H.N.D and through to selective undergraduate computer science and mathematics in whatever form you need help with. The major bits i feel could help are the logic parts to extend your grasp of these theoretical topics and concepts.* What's the best bits then?To be honest, i have previously little grasp of proofs except in niche topics as required for a course not wholly based on this topic. Say studying 'Mathematical Induction'. If you consider this describes your experiences then i feel this book is to be a great help. This book creates a better grasp on proofs NOT jumping feet first into the MUCH deeper parts. The bits i felt the most benefit from is the 'Sentential Logic', 'Quantificational Logic' and 'Proofs', 'Relationships'. The later parts of 'Functions' i have already covered elsewhere in more depth in other works and courses.The parts i engaged with and covered for the first time in my experience being the mathematical symbols for connectives '^' , 'v' '¬', '<->', '->', '<-', member of sets, not member of sets and quantifiers and few others. The depth in which it is expressed i felt carried REALLY well and engaged my thoughts and pushed me to grasp stuff i had seen in other manners but not in formal set notation before. These topics are to help in other areas and ricochet into other algebraic courses you may reacquaint yourself with.The depth i feel has been curtailed to make a foot - in- the - door and not to cover every proof that's possible in mathematical terms. There are many questions and answers to help clarify issues if you're confused with too.* SummaryThe author knows how to put an book together to help the student new to some of these areas in a way that's really helpful and enjoyable to encourage the study of this topic further down the line. I really enjoyed this book and found it useful to tidy up a few areas i could not make progress with. The mathematical explanations of qualifiers, 'and', 'or', 'not' symbolic notation is a nice touch and i wish other writers would explain these before going into depth.

This is a beautiful introduction to proofs, propositional logic, sets, relations and functions for first year university students. It is clear that Velleman's first and only interest is to keep the reader engaged and make sure that the concepts become accessible and sink in. His style is vibrant and engaging, and I actually found myself looking forward to reading this while I was studying for part of a Computer Science exam.That said, this book truly comes into its own if you read it cover to cover, or at the very least chapter to chapter. This is not strictly speaking a reference text, and Velleman places more emphasis on fluidity and clarity than on organising the material into neat compartments. The chapters aren't unreasonably long, however, and with a bit of dedication this book will take you a long way.

I only read the last parts, starting from the chapter about induction, so take that into consideration.The 'scratch work' sections are great, and this book did what other books didn't, it gave me a tactic for doing proofs. Other books show a lot of proofs and explain why the proofs are correct. That is great, but without a 'tool set' for working with proofs it is hard to know were to start when you are supposed to do them yourself. This is the only book I have read, also since, that do this deliberately and it gave me the foundations I needed to follow discrete math courses.

I struggled severely in my logic/discrete math course. I read a few good reviews on this book on amazon.com, and bought it. It's such an easy read, while being thorough at the same time. Everything is explained perfectly and I couldn't ask for a better book. This is one of the few books I feel should be in any computer science student's bookshelf.

Fantastic book...really good if you like to use your brain.

Fantastic book! Delivers on what it promises, and more ...

Excellent

This should be an excellent introduction to the logic and construction of mathematical proofs. However, there are far too many examples and questions that are rendered unreadable by garbled mathematical formulae. This is not acceptable. This version is only marginally cheaper than the paperback, yet contains more typographical errors in the first few pages of chapter 3 than would be acceptable in an entire mathematical text.