Proofs
and
Concepts

the fundamentals of abstract mathematics

by Dave Witte Morris and Joy Morris
with thanks to P D Magnus

This free undergraduate textbook provides an introduction to proofs, logic, sets, functions, and other fundamental topics of abstract mathematics.  It is designed to be the textbook for a bridge course that introduces undergraduates to abstract mathematics, but it is also suitable for independent study by undergraduates (or mathematically mature high-school students), or for use as a very inexpensive supplement to undergraduate courses in any field of abstract mathematics.

The book is being released online with a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0).  Although not in final form, it has already been used as a textbook for 3 semesters at the University of Lethbridge.  The preliminary version posted in May 2009 is approximately 220 pages.

Click here for a PDF file of the most recent version (approx 1.8MB).



Table of Contents

Part I. Introduction to Logic and Proofs
1. What is Logic?
2. Propositional Logic
3. Basic Theorems of Propositional Logic
4. Two-Column Proofs

Part II. Sets and First-Order Logic
5. Sets, Subsets, and Predicates
6. Operations on Sets
7. First-Order Logic
8. Quantifier Proofs

Part III. Functions
9. Functions
10. One-to-one Functions
11. Onto Functions
12. Bijections
13. Inverse Functions
14. Composition of Functions

Part IV. Other Fundamental Concepts
15. Cardinality
16. Proof by Induction
17. Divisibility and Congruence
18. Equivalence Relations

Part V. Topics
19. Elementary Graph Theory
20. Isomorphisms