Start Doing Graph Theory
Start Doing Graph Theory by Sam Burnsby Sam Burns
Shares rank 3 of 20 mathematics textbooks by recommenders
People praise its readable, human-sounding prose and its clean website, and say it works as an introduction to graph theory for high school students. The main caveat is that it has no solutions to its practice problems.
People praise its readable, human-sounding prose and its clean website, and say it works as an introduction to graph theory for high school students. The main caveat is that it has no solutions to its practice problems.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Readable, human-sounding prose
“I'd be surprised to see current LLMs write as well (and as non-annoying) as the writing in this book.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Start Doing Graph Theory” “Reading through the first chapter, I got the feeling that it is more human than a lot of the books”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Start Doing Graph Theory” “It gives me confidence that it's written by a human”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Start Doing Graph Theory” - Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Start Doing Graph Theory”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No solutions to practice problems
“It's unfortunate that the book doesn't have solutions for practice problems.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Start Doing Graph Theory”
Other mathematics textbooks people recommend
The four most recommended other mathematics textbooks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algorithms for Optimizationby Kochenderfer and Wheeler | 10 | 1 | 91% | 1 | — | — |
| Mathematics for Computer Scienceby Lehman, Leighton and Meyer | 8 | 4 | 67% | 1 | — | — |
| Start Doing Graph Theoryby Sam BurnsThis page | 7 | 1 | 88% | 1 | — | — |
| Numerical Recipesby Press et al. | 7 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
| Concrete Mathematicsby Graham, Knuth and Patashnik | 7 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“was a good introduction for high school math grade”
“Beautiful website and a breath of fresh air compared to the gitbook/vitepress typical styles”
“Looks like an excellent book”
“it is far better than the best AI prose I've read”
“Reading through the first chapter, I got the feeling that it is more human than a lot of the books”
“I'd be surprised to see current LLMs write as well (and as non-annoying) as the writing in this book.”
“It gives me confidence that it's written by a human”
“It's unfortunate that the book doesn't have solutions for practice problems.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.