Math 453 Resources
Selected online resources
Books
Although the Strayer text is the only one you need for this course, it
is useful to occasionally look at other texts, as they may offer a
somewhat different perspective, additional examples, more problems, and
additional topics. I have placed the following two texts
on library reserve in the Altgeld Hall Math Library.
You'll find them listed under course number
453 in the reserve catalog. Simply ask for the book by author
(Niven/Zuckerman/Montgomery or Rosen), and the clerk should be able to
get it for you; you can check out the books for 2 hours at a time
in the library.
Both of these texts have been used in the past as Math 453 texts. The
choice of Strayer as the 453 text is not set in stone, and I'd certainly
be interested in any opinions in this matter, and especially on how
Strayer compares with the books below.
- Niven/Zuckerman/Montgomery, Number Theory.
This was the text used here for 453 in the 1980s and 1990s. It is more
advanced than the Strayer text, is about twice the size and twice the
cost of Strayer, and contains a lot more material and many more
problems. It is a classic, whose first edition, authored by Niven
and Zuckerman alone, came out in the 1960s, at a time when the eventual
third author (Hugh Montgomery, who is now a Professor at Michigan) was
an undergraduate here at the U of I. It is a highly-respected text,
although, as a first text in number theory, it may be a bit overwhelming.
- Rosen, Elementary Number Theory.
This text was used for 453 in the years before we switched to Strayer two years
ago. It is very well written and more user-friendly than
Niven/Zuckerman/Montgomery, though just as thick and just as expensive.
The structure is very similar to that of Strayer, and it has lots of
great, easy-to-read, examples, and tons of problems. Its author,
Kenneth Rosen, is also the author of the Discrete Mathematics text that
is used here for classes like Math 213 and CS 173/273.
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