Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms

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As the author says in the preface, there are two ways of presenting algorithms. One classifies algorithms according to a problem type. The other classifies algorithms according to design techniques. A book in the first category will have separate chapters on sorting, searching, graphs etc. These books are like a toolbox. Programmers pick a particular algorithm needed for a problem, modify it if needed and obtain a solution. Most of the algorithm books fall in this category. The problem with this approach is that you have at your disposal only a finite set of algorithms to play with. What if you needed some new kind of algorithm for a specific problem. You are stuck, because most books on algorithms don't teach you how to design new algorithms or what design technique is most suited for your particular problem. It is here that Anany Levitin's book fills the gap. He teaches you the major design techiniques like Brute-Force, Divide-and-Conquer, Greedy techniques. The various algorithms like sorting, searching, graph algorithms are classified according to the various techniques. The advantage of this is that many diverse algorithms get classified according to a particular design technique. For e.g Bubble sort, Convex-Hull problem, Travelling salesman problem, Knapsack problem all fall in the Brute-Force design category. So when you are designing new algorithms you know at the start what type of problem it is and how it should be tackled.
The book teaches you algorithm design and analysis from a completely different view point. It is entertaining to read and the problems at the end of each chapter are wonderful. I only hope that the author adds nore algorithms in his next edition. Go get it!

I recently finished using this book for a course. I found it to be very well written and the presentation was excellent. Most books on algorithms are hard to read and overly mathematical. This book emphasizes more the textual explanation of algorithms for practical applications and not as much on theoretical proofs etc. The exercises at the end of the chapters strongly reinforce the contents and insightful hints to every exercise are given at the end of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed using this book and found it challenging. Other books I used for reference such as the MIT classic Introduction to Algorithms was also useful but much more difficult to understand initially.

This was my textbook for my algorithms class at UW-Madison.
I like it better than Cormen's book, (introduction to algorithms) I think it's more readable and easy to follow.

A couple of caveats:
1.) This book is more of a survey. It does a deep-dive of some algorithms, but a lot of them only get a high-level description. If you are interested, you will have to look elsewhere for details, etc.

2.) The exercises are very well-written, and very interesting, some of them have been interview questions that I have encountered. The thing is, there is no answer key, and the hints section is not very useful at times.

Still, this book opened my eyes to the beauty of algorithms and math, and the elegance of solutions that are possible for "hard" problems.
After you read this book, you will have an idea of what is possible and it will give you enough ammunition, enthusiasm, and background for digging deeper.
A great collection to pair with is Sedgewick's collection on algorithms, Bundle of Algorithms in Java, Third Edition (Parts 1-5): Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching, and Graph Algorithms, Third Edition which may fill in some of the detail that this book may lack.

This book presents the field of algorithm analysis from a different perspective. This book attempts to provide you with enough foundation to not only pick common sorting, searching, etc., algorithms for a problem, but shows you how to design new algorithms if need be. The book is an introduction, so keep that in mind. But the foundation it paves should last you a lifetime.

I'm currently being forced to use this book in an Algorithms course and while it is overall more readable than the Cormen book i.e. lots less math it leaves out a lot. It seems that in the quest to keep the book short and fit everything in there the author leaves out a lot of necessary information and refers the reader to other books. You cannot get through a chapter without having to skip ahead chapters to fill in missing info or looking up something on the web. Also, the few solutions in the back are a joke most referring the reader back to the book or saying the answer is self-evident. The author seems to spend more time on puzzles than actually covering algorithms it seems. Since it's more of a cliff notes, dummies book I'm currently being forced to go through the school libraries collection of algorithms books. This book alone won't be enough to pass an Algorithms course in my opinion. You are better off just using Google than using this book.