8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Fundamentals, July 1, 2002
This review is from: Algorithm Design: Foundations, Analysis, and Internet Examples (Paperback)
There are many good books with this title or similar ones. This is probably one of the better ones for your bookshelf and for use in academia. The examples are written in Java (a current language) and they are easy to read. The presentation is clean and illustrative. The authors have a good track record for expertise and papers published, and you get the sense that it is more real-world than most similar books.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Do yourself a favor and dont buy this book, March 12, 2008
This review is from: Algorithm Design: Foundations, Analysis, and Internet Examples (Paperback)
Though I am a member of Amazon for years, and purchased many books, this is my first review about a book. It`s 2 am, and I am trying to understand the book`s questions, as a PhD student for hours. I took algorithms course before when I was getting my MS in a different university, where we were using Cormen & Leiserson`s book, I was liking this course and having no problems, I also watched all the MIT OCW`s lectures from Leiserson and the other young professor, and I can say I was totally comfortable with subjects. Algorithm was a course I was liking till I came across with that book.
However, this book became my nightmare with its ambiguities, poorly written sentences, ambiguous questions. I asked TA about some questions, and for every and every question I asked, she said `oh yes, this was not clear for other students too, so we thought this may be ...` And the hard part about questions are understanding the question, not solving it. This incidence happened in a 2nd tier(top 30) US university, in a graduate course.
What can I say? What is the reason and justification to write such a book?
I think, during my life I used over 40 textbooks, this one without doubt is in top 3 in worst text book lists (with Mark Weiss`s Data Structures, and Sedra& Smith`s microelectronics). I am giving two stars because they made at least a website, though I cant say its very helpful, they continue to being ambiguous even in the hints they say.
The book is so dull that, by just inspecting introduction which tells Archimed`s history (which became a cliche even in high school books and irrelevant to the introduction and algorithms in general) you can see this. Then look at Sedgewick`s introduction about an efficient algorithm finding prime numbers, Knuth`s introduction about roots of algorithm word etc...
I recommend Cormen`s or Sedgewick`s books, actually I cant imagine a worse book than that, if I had written something only that can be worser, but I am not claiming I am a good writer/author (as it can be seen from this review). I am sorry for writing such a harsh review, but my advice if you see a course offering this textbook, please refrain for taking the course for your good.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book hits the sweet spot, December 4, 2008
This review is from: Algorithm Design: Foundations, Analysis, and Internet Examples (Paperback)
This book will take you from "programmer" to "engineer". Recommended to me by a Google engineer. You use her work everyday.
You need understanding of programming fundamentals to use this book. With that said, if you finish this book and the exercises, you'll be in the top ranks.
Easy to read and not quite as dense as CLRS Introduction to Algorithms.
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