Hi guys. In computer science we are using discrete math right? I want know what is the role of discrete math in computing. I mean in our everyday lives, I'd like to see the importance of it. I want to see the theories in discrete math is used in the field programming / software developing, games, web developing, business, or operating system stuff like that. Cos I don't see it. Especially if you are living where outsourcing is in rapid growth. I've asked my professor on this one he will just answer "is included to my course a pre-requisite of automata" or "in some technology today" I don't want a general answer, I want a specific answer on this. Thanks guys.

Among common applications of various Discrete Math domains (with examples for end users).

Number theory: cryptography (ssl), hashes (hash tables).
Formal languages: substring matching (search & replace), rational expressions (lexers).
Trees: grammars (parsers), heaps (priority queue), algorithm optimization (Ukkonen & suffix trees), B-trees (filesystems), Huffman (compression algorithms)
Infinite game theory: 'friendly' communication protocols (TCP-IP), encrypted protocol verification (ssl).
Graphs: addressing (IP packet routing), graph-cut algorithms (image extraction and treatment), maximum flow analysis (optimization of traffic, both cars and IP packets), automata (grep), shortest path (traffic optimization, Google Earth, Mappy), garbage collectors (most managed languages), control flow representation (static analysis).

To be honest, I'm pretty curious about what you can do with a computer that isn't completely trivial and doesn't require discrete math.