Algorithms in Java, Parts 1-4 (3rd Edition) (Pts.1-4) (Paperback)

by Robert Sedgewick (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Represents the essential first half of Sedgewick's complete work. Its four parts: fundamentals, data structures, sorting, and searching. Appeals equally to both the academic and professional markets. Softcover.

From the Back Cover
Sedgewick has a real gift for explaining concepts in a way that makes them easy to understand. The use of real programs in page-size (or less) chunks that can be easily understood is a real plus. The figures, programs, and tables are a significant contribution to the learning experience of the reader; they make this book distinctive.
--William A. Ward, University of South Alabama

This edition of Robert Sedgewick's popular work provides current and comprehensive coverage of important algorithms for Java programmers. Michael Schidlowsky and Sedgewick have developed new Java implementations that both express the methods in a concise and direct manner and provide programmers with the practical means to test them on real applications.

Many new algorithms are presented, and the explanations of each algorithm are much more detailed than in previous editions. A new text design and detailed, innovative figures, with accompanying commentary, greatly enhance the presentation. The third edition retains the successful blend of theory and practice that has made Sedgewick's work an invaluable resource for more than 400,000 programmers!

This particular book, Parts 1-4, represents the essential first half of Sedgewick's complete work. It provides extensive coverage of fundamental data structures and algorithms for sorting, searching, and related applications. Although the substance of the book applies to programming in any language, the implementations by Schidlowsky and Sedgewick also exploit the natural match between Java classes and abstract data type (ADT) implementations.

Highlights
• Java class implementations of more than 100 important practical algorithms
• Emphasis on ADTs, modular programming, and object-oriented programming
• Extensive coverage of arrays, linked lists, trees, and other fundamental data structures
• Thorough treatment of algorithms for sorting, selection, priority queue ADT implementations, and symbol table ADT implementations (search algorithms)
• Complete implementations for binomial queues, multiway radix sorting, randomized BSTs, splay trees, skip lists, multiway tries, B trees, extendible hashing, and many other advanced methods
• Quantitative information about the algorithms that gives you a basis for comparing them
• More than 1,000 exercises and more than 250 detailed figures to help you learn properties of the algorithms

Whether you are learning the algorithms for the first time or wish to have up-to-date reference material that incorporates new programming styles with classic and new algorithms, you will find a wealth of useful information in this book.

0201361205B08282002

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (August 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201361205
• ISBN-13: 978-0201361209
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #650,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #35 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Java & Databases

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ideal for the serious developer, July 31, 2003

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Algorithms in Java, Part 5: Graph Algorithms (3rd Edition) (Pt.5) (Paperback)

In my work, I have a bunch of interlinked objects. I can use tables to display these, but showing linkages is awkward. It is far more natural to graph them. This lets me use evolution, for the human eye and brain are excellent at processing images and discerning patterns in them. But I also want to algorithmically find groupings and invariant properties of the graphs. There is a danger here. In graph theory, it is very easy to inadvertantly pose a simple question that is computationally hard to solve (NP-hard). Conversely, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. From graph theory, there may well be properties of my graph that I can easily extract. Certainly, the amount of research on graphs is voluminous.

But how does one take advantage of that? Consulting research journals in maths for papers on graph theory is really feasible only for the career mathematician. But for me, graphs are just a tool; not an ends per se. So I need a book that has the right amount of complexity. It needs to get enough into the subject, beyond the trivial exposition of definitions. Yet it should not bury me in lemmas and theorems.

I found such a book! This one. A well deserved third iteration. The explanations are extremely clear. Before I encountered this text, I used Donald Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" (which is also put out by Addison-Wesley) and his treatment of graphs. But Sedgewick's discourse is far more extensive and, to me, just as well written.

A bonus is the extensive problem sets at the ends of each chapter. Even if I have no inclination to do them, the results they give are a valuable extension of the text, by providing an extra summary of the research. I only wish that Sedgewick would provide answers, like Knuth. But this is a just a quibble.

This edition has example code in Java. Certainly nothing wrong with that. [I program in Java.] But really the code should be a secondary consideration to you. If you are a programmer and you can understand the text, then you should be of a calibre that you can write the code.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars `Algorithms in Java' aka `How little code does it take to confuse people?', February 9, 2006

By	A. Flamholz - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have the dubious distinction of having taken a class that used this book as it's central text. The illustrations are great. The explanations of algorithms and general algorithm design concepts are clear. The code, however, is neigh unreadable in a lot of places.

This was a huge problem for me, as I had a lot of difficulty seeing a clear mapping from the concepts explained to the code examples. Sedgwick's code examples often build on previous ones to the degree that they are not understandable on their own (this is especially true with the graph algorithms in part 5). If you try to use this book as a reference you will find yourself digging much harder than you would like in order to understand code samples that are actually quite simple. You could see how this might make a programming based course difficult.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a gifted writer, February 12, 2007

By	mathboy (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

[...]I have at least half of both volumes, and it really seems to me that there are real problems here with the exposition. Let me see if I can elaborate.

Here is an actual sentence from the book-

We construct a symbol table that is made up of an ordered array of keys, except that we keep in that array not the key, but an index into the text string that points to the first character of the key.

Consider that there are two possible conflicting meanings of the sentence fragment :

...an index into the text string that points to the first character of the key.

In the first meaning, there is an index that points to the first character of a string which string has the property that it, in its turn "points to the first character of the key". (a String is engaged in pointing and so in the index.)

In the second meaning, there is an index that points (into) a text string and in fact that index points into the FIRST CHARACTER of that text string, and that first character the index is pointing to, well, that is the also first character of the key. (only the index is pointing; the string pointeth not.)

OK so how do you describe what's missing here? At least the disambiguating use of commas, at least. It's as though he likes to write in subordinate clauses, but thinks it's economical to leave out the punctuation (which, it is true, there are no hard and fast rules for).

So it's just sentence after sentence after sentence like that. Sometimes you can understand what he's saying. Other times, really you just can't. IF each sentence has 2 (or more!) possible interpretations, and each sentence depends on your understanding the last (as is the case- he never says the same thing in two different ways), then you get this ambiguity growing at the alarming rate of x^2, an observation the author might enjoy.

As the other reviewers said, the code is a C programmers attempt to write in Java. This never goes well.....


But the fact remains it is still the most accessible and thorough coverage of some of its subjects. So what are you going to do?

I don't get the impression he is deliberately bartering in obscuratism, it's just that this book suffers (and so will you) from a lack of editing, a lack of reviewing and feedback by genuine, unaided learners etc. etc.

You might want to check other people's lists for alternatives. Or not. Perhaps that passage was perfectly clear to you.