Can you advise me of some good maths revision books to get

Flaccus

So I'm going back to college in sept after 15 years in the workforce, to do an MsC in Software Engineering which will have some mathematical element to it. While my background is in computing including previous undergrad and postgrad qualifications my mathermatics is decidely rusty after all these years, and even at my best I always had to work harder than most. So I'm looking to give myself a quick primer before Sept.

Below are the areas that will be covered by 1 particular subject I will be doing in the 1st Semester, most of the contents which I have come across at 1 stage or other in my studies many moons ago or at least recognise. It seems to be the only subject which promises a mathermatical side to it. And while I'm in the process of acquiring the main texts for this course, I get a feeling I need to go back and study some elementary maths. I would welcome any suggestions on books I should be looking at.

• Syntax and Semantics of Mathematical Expressions, Prefix Postfix and Graphical Representations, Evaluation Mechanisms;
• Introducing to Structure of Formal Proofs in Elementary Algebra Using Post’s Production Systems
• Formal Languages, Grammars, and Chomsky’s Adaptation of Post’s Notation to Specification of Grammars
• State Machines (FSM, Stack Automata, Turing Machines) in Computer Science and Software Engineering
• Introduction to Recursive Function Theory
• State Machines, the Grammars of the Languages they recognize, and the functions they can compute.
• Induction over Natural Numbers and over Well-Ordered Sets
• Formal Semantics of Propositional and Predicate Logic and Simple Imperative Programming Languages
• Formal Derivation and Verification of Simple Imperative Programs
• Binary Relations, Logical Data Modelling
• Introduction to Programming Language Paradigms;
• Signatures, Expressions, Objects, and Algebras

Thanks

Edit : I only saw the sticky above for maths books to check out after I posted. So apologies.

LeixlipRed

No worries. I'd imagine that they're be a recommended text for that course or something. I'm not sure you'd get a maths textbook that covers all those areas. There seems to be very little "pure" maths in there anyway. Maybe look at the module description for a recommended text or contact the leturer/course coordinator.

Flaccus

Thanks. Yeah, I have contacted them and was sent the syllabus back with recommended books, so I have ordered these. From past experience doing computer courses, i find that there is a minimum requirement expected when it comes to Maths usually not covered by the syllabus, and am worried I won't meet that over being out of education for so long. Possibly a little paranoid. Still, I think I have Engineering Maths by Stroud lying around somewhere which comes highly recommended. Core Maths was another one someone in work recommended to me. I'll guess I'll wait till the main texts for this course arrive and decide then what I need to do.

LeixlipRed

Yeh, some sort of engineering maths book should cover the basics in algebra, calculus, etc. If you do have difficulty when you start the course pop back to us and we'll be glad to help out

Fremen

I'd stay away from any heavy-duty calculus if you're preparing for this course.

Be sure you know how logarithms and powers work, cumputer science uses a lot of asymptotics (reading this would help, too). You should also be comfortable with logic: how implication works, De Morgan's Laws and so on. Any introductory book on logic would probably do for this, take a look through amazon and see what's available.

Julia Set

Would definitely agree with Fremen on that. Asymptotics and logic are the key mathematical areas. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you might browse iTunesU for any relevant lectures. Checking out MIT OpenCourseWare might not be a bad idea either; below is a link to just one example.

Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-042JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm

Flaccus

Thanks for all the advice. I picked up "Discrete Mathematics for Computing" today in O'Mahony's. Seems to cover the topics I mentioned. So I'll have a read of that over the weekend, and look into the links posted above. I musn't be as dumb as I thought though, as I am pretty decent at logic and analysing algorithms (part of my job), and I definitely covered Big O notation in one of my courses many moons ago.