Programming Challenges (Paperback)

~ Steven S. Skiena (Author), Miguel Revilla (Author) "This book is designed to be used in tandem with one (or bath) of two robot judging websites..." (more)
Key Phrases: output for each test case, robot judge, test case containing, Program Design Example, Garden of Eden, Anderson Consulting (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Skiena and Revilla's new book 'Programming Challenges: The Programming Contest Training Manual' is just the ticket for those interested in a jumpstart to the world of contest programming. With special emphasis on the international ACM collegiate contests, the book's best feature is each chapter's pithy introduction that demystifies a particular scheme or algorithmic approach. The ensemble of these explications coupled with the contest strategy guidelines in the appendix can enable a novice to enhance contest results dramatically in a short time simply by solving the suggested exercises in each chapter. Even contest veterans are likely to be able to find a nugget or two in the explanations and strategies. "Presented in a logical order (contest programming has over a dozen different primary attacks), the book guides readers not only through the techniques and algorithms required but also through a huge set of problems that can be used for training. Solutions can be submitted to Valladolid University's online trainer for quick feedback and reinforcement. "If you're the sort who likes to have a single volume that covers the vast majority of a field, you'll love Skiena and Revilla's new tome." --Rob Kolstad, Ph.D., Head Coach, USA Computing Olympiad

Product Description

The challenges of problems from international programming competitions are an effective way to improve your algorithmic and coding skills and understanding. This volume uses international programming competition-type problems to motivate the study of algorithms, programming, and other topics in computer science. The book includes more than 100 programming challenges, as well as the theory and key concepts necessary for approaching them. Problems are organized by topic, and supplemented by complete tutorial material. Readers gain a concrete understanding of both algorithmic techniques and advanced coding topics.

* Presents practice training for all major programming contests -- ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC), International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), and Topcoder Challenge

* Serves as a convenient, web-based means of adding a programming component to any algorithms or software engineering course

* Contains complete working code for fundamental data structures and graph, string, numerical and geometric algorithms

* Provides a brief-yet-thorough treatment of key elements in number theory, geometry, dynamic programming, and graph algorithms

* Supports all popular programming languages (C, C++, Pascal, Java)

Steven S. Skiena is a member of the faculty of computer science at SUNY Stony Brook and is author of many widely used books, including The Algorithm Design Manual. He received the 2001 IEEE Computer Society Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Miguel Revilla is a member of the faculty of computer science at the University of Valladolid, Spain. He is official website archivist of the ACM ICPC and creator/maintainer of the primary robot-judge, contest-hosting website.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (May 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387001638
• ISBN-13: 978-0387001630
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #202,681 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book - several caveats, September 18, 2004

By	David Bock "javaguy" (Hamilton, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, let me get the caveats out of the way:

1) 'Contest' code like this does not teach nor encourage many of the concepts desirable for large system development. The point is not to have code that is extensible, maintainable, well designed, etc... although there are some good points (see below).

2) This book does not try to 'teach' concepts. That is not the point either (see below).

While the book is not 'teaching', it does set a bunch of interesting playing fields in which people can explore, discover, and learn on their own. In this regard, this book is excellent. I am considering using it to lead a study group at work for this reason.

While it is not promoting the development of many of the desirable skills I think develops generally need more of, it is promoting the use of requirements, detailed design, and acceptance tests... this is how the projects are specified and graded.

Yes, I said graded. This is a really cool feature of the book - there is a website where your solutions can be submitted, and a 'robot' will run and test them, letting you know the results. The way they pull that off is pretty cool. You create an account, and it ranks how well you are doing.

If you are interesting in contest coding, if you are looking for some platform on which to lead a study group on algorithms/problem solving, or if you are the kind of person who picks up Games Magazine looking for little problems to solve, this book is for you.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent problems for programming challenges, December 15, 2003

By	Charles Ashbacher "([e-mail])" (Marion, Iowa United States([e-mail])) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

By far, the hardest part of teaching programming classes is evaluating the programs. Unless you have the students do only simplistic programs, they are difficult to read and running the executables does not always give an accurate appraisal of what was done. One possible solution to this educational conundrum is to take advantage of the robot judge maintained at the book's companion web site.
The book contains many problems to be solved via a program that must accept inputs having a specific, albeit general format and then produce the appropriate output. The robot judge is capable of evaluating programs written in Pascal, C, C++ and Java and it will return one of eleven different results, all of which are two letter acronyms. If the program is not given a passing grade, then the message will not be of much benefit.
The problems are placed in several categories, including sorting, combinatorics, number theory, graph traversal, grid operations and geometry. I identified several that I can and most likely will use as assignments the next time I teach basic programming. While some problems require significant background information, in general it is not so great that it is beyond the bounds of what can be done in a basic computing class. The problems were originally created to prepare students for programming contests, so the level of difficulty is such that they could not be used until later in a beginning course. However, the book would be an excellent text for any advanced programming class where the students are split into teams. Each chapter begins with primer material for the problems given in that chapter and I included it in my best books of the year 2003 column for the online "Journal of Object Technology".

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This may not be what you are looking for., July 11, 2005

By	J. A. Zimmer (Oklahoma, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a book about problems in programming contests but I feel it is
also a introduction to algorithms. An introduction that makes you work
out for yourself things that you might expect to have explained to you
in a textbook. There are two approaches for preparing yourself as a
competitive programmer. One approach involves learning lots of relevant
small skills. Later with practice and ability you may be able to put
those skills together in truely creative ways. The other approach
involves learning some general principles and then practicing problems
which apply those principles in more (or less!) obvious ways. I have
always preferred the second approach, especially when it done with
problems whose solutions are less obvious. Solving such problems forces
you to practice what you need need to be a creative problem solver. The
authors of this book seem to agree with me. You may not like that. I, of
course, do.