How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist?

Posted by mort on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by mort
Published on 2012-08-31T14:43:38Z Indexed on 2012/08/31 15:52 UTC
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education

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Parallelism

As the title says,

How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist? Background: I'm pursuing a Master's degree with a focus on fundamentals such as Algorithms, Complexity and Computability Theory and Programming Languages to get a good foundation for working in the field of Parallel Computing.

Some more background: My university grants a lot of freedom in the choices of courses for my Master's degree. It's officially called "Software Engineering", but due to a the broad range of electives, a different focus is possible. Interestingly, none of the electives is a lecture in Math! I'm thinking about doing a course about Discrete Mathematics that would take half a semester to complete successfully, even if I can't use it for my degree. So with this question I'm trying to find out if the effort is justifiable.

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