Book Image

Practical Discrete Mathematics

By : Ryan T. White, Archana Tikayat Ray
Book Image

Practical Discrete Mathematics

By: Ryan T. White, Archana Tikayat Ray

Overview of this book

Discrete mathematics deals with studying countable, distinct elements, and its principles are widely used in building algorithms for computer science and data science. The knowledge of discrete math concepts will help you understand the algorithms, binary, and general mathematics that sit at the core of data-driven tasks. Practical Discrete Mathematics is a comprehensive introduction for those who are new to the mathematics of countable objects. This book will help you get up to speed with using discrete math principles to take your computer science skills to a more advanced level. As you learn the language of discrete mathematics, you’ll also cover methods crucial to studying and describing computer science and machine learning objects and algorithms. The chapters that follow will guide you through how memory and CPUs work. In addition to this, you’ll understand how to analyze data for useful patterns, before finally exploring how to apply math concepts in network routing, web searching, and data science. By the end of this book, you’ll have a deeper understanding of discrete math and its applications in computer science, and be ready to work on real-world algorithm development and machine learning.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Part I – Basic Concepts of Discrete Math
7
Part II – Implementing Discrete Mathematics in Data and Computer Science
12
Part III – Real-World Applications of Discrete Mathematics

Best-fit lines and the least-squares method

In this section, we will learn about best-fit lines and the least-squares method and see some very simple plots to enforce these concepts. Best-fit lines will be used to fit a dataset, and through doing this, it is made sure that the least-squares error is minimized.

Variable

A variable is a feature that does not have a fixed value. For example, let's say you want to buy a car and the most important feature for you is horsepower. You then go ahead and look at different car models to compare the horsepower values. Here the horsepower is a variable, since it takes different values based on the car model.

Linear relationship

Linear relationship is a term used to describe a straight-line relationship. This can be expressed mathematically as the equation of a line.

For example, if you are interested in finding the relationship between two variables, such as horsepower and weight, for different cars, and if the horsepower...