# Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman, Leighton and Meyer

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman, Leighton and Meyer and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a valuable, witty discrete math and probability text that is free as a full PDF. Critics say it lacks solutions, which makes self-study harder.

## Why people recommend it

- Valuable resource, understandable despite difficulty (2 comments): "I really love this book, it is hard af but I still can understand 1-2 pages of each paragraph." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551367)) "This is a very valuable resource for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553492))
- Available as free PDF or paper (2 comments): "I've literally been looking for this recently and now I get it as a full PDF." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551622)) "I prefer paper for dipping into and working through bits and pieces." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553886))

## What people warn about

- No solutions for self-study (1 comments): "without solutions it makes it much harder to use for self-study" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556346))
- Too much packed into one book (1 comments): "I'm not such a fan of trying to cram everything-mathematically-relevant into a single huge book" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554177))
- Missing proof of circular buffers (1 comments): "It did not see the proof of the correctness of circular buffers?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552622))
- Focuses on numbers over relations (1 comments): "seems more about the numbers than relations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46552054))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Algorithms for Optimization by Kochenderfer and Wheeler](https://hackerapproved.com/p/algorithms-for-optimization.md): 10 recommend
- [Numerical Recipes by Press et al.](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numerical-recipes.md): 7 recommend
- [Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik](https://hackerapproved.com/p/concrete-mathematics.md): 7 recommend
- [Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burns](https://hackerapproved.com/p/start-doing-graph-theory.md): 7 recommend
- [Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-complex-analysis.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1680921215?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9781680921212) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman, Leighton and Meyer", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mathematics-for-computer-science/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).