Although it's not exactly math heavy, I think Steven Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual manages to bridge the gap between the "Programming Collective Intelligence" and something like Knuth's books.
Knuth's books, i.e., TACP, are plenty
easy to read: Mostly just skip the
details of the math. Why skip? Because
working through the details can take
a lot of time, and for just using the
algorithms the details usually amount
to little down to nothing.
The details of the math might be quite
good as examples of math techniques for
evaluating the execution time ('computational
time complexity') of some algorithm not
covered in Knuth.
The details of the math might be quite good as examples of math techniques for evaluating the execution time ('computational time complexity') of some algorithm not covered in Knuth.