During the summer theory seminar for my research group, I like to cover a topic that is mathematically challenging, but not something that any of us would normally learn about in the course of our day-to-day research. This summer, we’re working through the book generatingfunctionology by Herbert Wilf , a mathematician at U. Penn. This book has the marvelous succinctness of many great math texts, while somehow being more accessible and even periodically having a wry sense of humor (the “snake oil method”?). Divide and conquer is one of the most powerful approaches we have for solving problems in CS (whereby divide and conquer I mean: recursion, induction, recurrence relations, etc.). This book extends the applicability of that approach.
Plus, the book is free! A fully functional pdf is available at the above web page.
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I do the same thing ! it’s a great idea.
Comment by Suresh Venkatasubramanian May 31, 2010 @ 7:40 pmYeah it took me a while to realize the importance of learning things that are not just on the critical path for the next paper. But now that I try to set aside some significant time to do it, I really like it. At the very least, it makes the process of doing research more fun, and I think gives confidence for attacking big problems: If I know this tool X that many other people don’t know, maybe I can use X to solve the problem.
Comment by Jared June 1, 2010 @ 5:35 pm