<p>Should I take Calc 3 THEN take Discrete Math, or can I take both of them at the same time?</p>
<p>What is Discrete Math mainly consist of? How hard is it? And which section should I be more aware of?</p>
<p>Info about myself: Computer Science major. I passed the first 2 calc with an A(more or less lucky).</p>
<p>If you have any addition information about Discrete Math, you are welcome to share it.</p>
<p>Discrete Math was probably my least favorite course in my entire college career and the class that made me realize that CS was not really what I wanted to do. </p>
<p>I ended up changing my major to Econ. Now I am getting a second degree in IE and I still despise this class many years later.</p>
<p>You will be dealing with matrices, a lot of proofs, mathematical induction, etc</p>
<p>Now if you got an A in Calculus II, you will find Calculus III easier and Discrete Math is its own category, totally different from Trigonometry or any Calculus course</p>
<p>I am sure you could handle both at the same time but I think it would be very boring.</p>
<p>Discrete math is not hard (then again I was a math major who loved math). It involves logic, learning how to write proofs and learning different techniques of proofs, recursion and recurrence relations, relations and functions, sets, algorithm analysis, learning how to put together algorithms, graphs and trees, and some more things I can’t remember. </p>
<p>All in all discrete math can be boring but if you keep up with your work, it shouldn’t be a difficult course. It isn’t calculus based, and doing it with Cal 3 shouldn’t be a problem. Just keep up with your work and you’ll be fine. The main issue for me was getting bored, but maybe you’ll like it.</p>
<p>Discrete math is a lot of logic and proofs and possibly probability theory. It’s difficult but probably one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken, but one of my main interests is in formal logic.</p>
<p>Discrete math can include combinatorics and abstract algebra. The prerequisites can vary widely. I have a textbook that can be used at the high-school level.</p>
<p>There’s an online textbook for the MIT course and you can read through the chapters at the link below. If you have access to a university library, you could see if they have a copy of [Discrete</a> Mathematics and Its Applications: Kenneth Rosen: 9780073229720: Amazon.com: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Kenneth-Rosen/dp/0073229725]Discrete”>http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Kenneth-Rosen/dp/0073229725) which is a common undergraduate textbook.</p>
<p>[Readings</a> | Mathematics for Computer Science | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-042j-mathematics-for-computer-science-fall-2010/readings/]Readings”>Readings | Mathematics for Computer Science | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare)</p>
<p>To answer your question: yes, you can take them both at the same time. Discrete Math will probably feel quite different to you than what you’ve done in math before unless you’ve done a lot of competition-type things.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, and this is my personal opinion…</p>
<p>The sophomore-level Discrete Math (or Discrete Structures) course is not as “exciting” as the junior/senior-level courses in Combinatorics and/or Graph Theory. The more advanced Combinatorics/Graph Theory courses give a bunch of applications to the real world (airline flight networks, etc) and you come across quite a few “Ah-Hah” moments.</p>
<p>The earlier course is to get students familiar with proofs (a lot of students most likely haven’t seen them before) and provide other foundational material. The undergrad DM course I took included graph theory, combinatorics, abstract algebra and other topics though it didn’t cover proofs. This was taken quite a while ago when perhaps more students had experience in proofs. I’ve seen wide variations in how DM is taught. In some cases, it’s two 3-credit undergrad courses, sometimes a 4-credit undergrad course. It seems that professors have a fair amount of discretion in what they cover.</p>
<p>Recuperating from Calc 3 required copious amounts of adult beverages (drinking age 18 at the time) while Discrete math (CS curriculum) was a breeze. Ours included propositional logic, elementary combinatorics, recurrence relations, complexity analysis, elementary graph theory, and Boolean algebra.</p>
<p>I loved my discrete math class! I also loved my discrete structures class, which included a lot of the same. Some students are unlucky and get stuck with a teacher who just wants to do proof by induction, but I got a good one who had a passion for the subject. We covered first-order logic, Boolean algebra, set theory, and probability and counting. As well as proof methods (proof by induction and my personal favorite, proof by contradiction).</p>
<p>Other possibles include formal languages, graphs, trees, algorithms, searching and sorting, if the class has a more CS focus.</p>