The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals familiar with programming and basic mathematical language. Most chapters have the same basic structure: the authors discuss a problem as it occurs in a real-life situation, they illustrate the most important applications, and then they introduce simple solutions as informally as possible and as formally as necessary so the reader really understands the issues at hand. As they move to more advanced and optional issues, their approach gradually leads to a more mathematical treatment, including theorems and proofs. The book includes many examples, pictures, informal explanations, and exercises, and the implementation notes introduce clean, efficient implementations in languages such as C++ and Java.