The book provides mathematical knowledge and skills for computer science, especially for the
analysis of algorithms. According to the preface, the topics in
Concrete Mathematics are "a blend of CONtinuous and disCRETE mathematics".
Calculus is frequently used in the explanations and exercises. The term "concrete mathematics" also denotes a complement to "
abstract mathematics". The book is based on a course begun in 1970 by Knuth at
Stanford University. The book expands on the material (approximately 100 pages) in the "Mathematical Preliminaries" section of Knuth's
The Art of Computer Programming. Consequently, some readers use it as an introduction to that series of books.
Concrete Mathematics has an informal and often humorous style. The authors reject what they see as the dry style of most mathematics textbooks. The margins contain "mathematical
graffiti", comments submitted by the text's first editors: Knuth and Patashnik's students at Stanford. As with many of Knuth's books, readers are invited to claim a
reward for any error found in the book—in this case, whether an error is "technically, historically, typographically, or
politically incorrect". The book popularized some mathematical notation: the
Iverson bracket,
floor and ceiling functions, and
notation for rising and falling factorials. ==Typography==