Customer Reviews

Algorithms

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a professor in a state university, I learn, teach, and research on computer algorithms. Not many computer books are a joy to read, but
this one is exceptional: It is concise, informative, and inspiring.

I don't know since when computer books are synonymous to boring, lengthy
piles of printed papers filled with screen dumps. Truely innovative
books are rare. Not only does this book explain algorithms clearly, it also tells the stories behind them.

I would consider this book a good complement rather than a substitution
to Corman et al's book Introduction to Algorithms (which is one of the
most widely used textbook for algorithm course). If you just want to
find a book where you can translate the suedo code into a program, this
is not for you. The focus of this book is to explain and to inspire (which is also what I believe the real "Education" should be) rather than
dumping the students' head with codes and rules.

I would also like to mention that the book "the design and analysis of
algorithms" is also a good one. It is good for most colleges at undergraduate level except for a few "top-level" universities.

The entire book is available in PDF on Vazirani's website here: [...]

The website says "draft" but it's the same or better (errata corrected) than the print version. (I accidentally bought the print version even though I knew about the PDF. At least I was able to resell it for [...])

I used this book for CSE 101 Design and Analysis of Algorithms at UCSD. It's OK, but the level of detail of algorithms was too low for me to use just this book. I sometimes had to reference Wikipedia and other publications to achieve complete understanding.

This is one of the best introductory text on algorithms I've ever read. The concepts are presented clearly, the writing style is lucid, and whole book is very easy to follow. It emphasizes the ideas and insightful hints behind every algorithms, rather than the overly rigorous mathmatic proofs often found in other books. The book also includes a lot of exercises, as a complementary to the content. The side bars also provide a lot of interesting information.

I occasionally teach algorithms at CU Boulder to our undergraduates. This book accomplishes what it set out to do: provide a comprehensible (but not comprehensive) treatment of a core piece of Computer Science at an affordable cost.

That we get one of the greatest researchers in the area (Papadimitriou) alongside two other distinguished authors is just icing on the cake.

The first printing had numerous errors, though the online version of the book had already corrected many of them. I haven't used the book since then, but will in the Fall, and I'd expect with the vigor already invested by the authors, the book will be in even better shape.

I'm glad they wrote this thing.. it was long overdue.

This book is the best introductory text on algorithms that I have come across. For a layperson trying to understand algorithm analysis and design, I cannot think of a better starting point than this book provides.
The exercises in this book are very valuable to understanding the material especially as the book is terse and does not delve deeply into any particular aspect of algorithms. Overall the book is a joy to read and the exercises are fun.

As a CS undergrad at UC San Diego, the author used rough drafts of this book to teach the algorithms course I took as a student. Although we also used the Cormen("The Bible") Algorithms book for casual reference, this text is by far better to explain the concepts behind the algorithms. I must say that the author presents the course with this text far clearer and superior than the usual dry mathematicians and the contents of the material reflects his expertise in lecturing and writing. The lucid writing makes it a joy to actually read an algorithms book, and the exercises are definitely worth investigating. This book simply makes algorithms fun!

One of the most appealing characteristics of this book is the small size. Textbooks in algorithms are similar to those of other fields in that they have continued to increase in girth over the years. At 320 pages, this book is a relative midget.
However, that does not in any way mean that it is weak in content, there is plenty of material for a one-semester course in algorithms. The chapters are:

*) Prologue - a bit of history and the big-O notation
*) Algorithms with numbers - basic and modular arithmetic, primality testing and cryptography
*) Divide-and-conquer algorithms - multiplication, recurrence relations, mergesort, matrix multiplication and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).
*) Decomposition of graphs - the fundamental definition of directed and undirected graphs and performing depth-first searches.
*) Paths in graphs- basic algorithms used in graph searches
*) Greedy algorithms - some fundamental greedy algorithms and their basic level of performance
*) Dynamic programming - shortest paths, knapsack optimization and independent sets in trees
*) Linear programming and reductions - the definition of linear programming and some of the standard problems that it can be used to solve
*) NP-complete problems - definition of NP-complete, some examples and reduction strategies used to show NP equivalence
*) Coping with NP-completeness - intelligent search, approximation and random algorithms
*) Quantum algorithms - a brief foray into a possible revolution in computing. Explanations of how data may be stored and processed at the quantum level.

The explanations are brief yet thorough enough for advanced computer science students, the algorithms are presented in a generic pseudocode. A large set of exercises are included at the end of the chapters, the expectation is that the solutions will be expressed in pseudocode.
Despite the compactness of the presentation, this book is a worthy choice for the textbook in an algorithms course for upper level computer science majors.

The text is concise: a much smaller footprint than many other books.

Most of the text is well written, but regularly digresses into jargon and concepts that are simply not explained. There is no explanation for what level of background the reader is expected to have as well: Algebra, Calculus, Discrete Math, etc.

Further, the problems at the end of each chapter are mostly unrelated to the reading. If you don't immediately know how to solve them, they serve no practical use in learning new material or reinforcing concepts presenting in the book or elsewhere.

Additionally, the solutions manual is available ONLY to instructors in an institutional setting: private citizens (such as myself) hoping to brush up on concepts are simply out of luck.

In sort, this was a waste of my money.

From a student perspective, this book is a hit or miss. One example: Pg.12 "Ordinarily we would spell out the algorithm in pseudocode, but in this case it is so familiar that we do not repeat it." That algorithm is mentioned in an introductory Digital Logic class on how to do addition on the bit level. It is simple, but if you didn't know it you'd have to google it. Second example: Ch.3 Figure 3.7, 2nd figure is the result of running DFS on the first one. Nowhere does it mention what you do with edge A to F, and if we should ignore it or not in our output representation. I could go on and on. It will not kill authors to explain how they came to their conclusions in their examples - just a few sentences is all we students ask. My opinion on this book is mixed, but if you're going to use it just read it by a computer with the google page ready to go. You can almost certainly find better explanations from competent instructors.

Algorithms is a complex topic in computing that needs tentative learning. The authors of this book really succeeded in making learning algorithms more enjoying, interesting, and easy yet comprehensive and advanced. This is a difficult equation, but this book really achieves it. It takes you from the early foundation with the Fibonacci algorithm till the complex graph algorithms while explaining each milestone all over the way. The was they present this subject is in a story manner or a casual discussion between two computing professionals which makes the book interactive, easy to access, and comprehensive. I recommend this book for both beginner and advanced readers in the field of computing.