Abstract :
This book was inspired by course B3 (Introduction to Discrete Structures) of the ACM Curriculum 68. Five major topics are treated: sets and relations; graphs; algebraic structures; lattices; and Boolean Algebras. The particular order of these topics is from general to specific. "We start with the simplest structures, sets, and by adding properties, we reach more complicated structures." The five chapters evincing this scheme are sandwiched between Chapter 0, "Preliminary" (designed to establish some minimum of terminology), and two short chapters representing candidates for additions of this course: 1) combinatorics and 2) algorithms and Turing machines.