I am a math major who has taken a few cs courses from the cs department at my university. Up until reading this book cs has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I have heard a million and one time how cs is based on mathematics but aside from understanding the idea of traversing through arrays as you would the indexes of a sequence, I have never really seen the connection between the two subjects. This book does an amazing job of demonstrating the mathematical basis of cs. From the very beginning when the authors deconstruct the for-loop used in a insert-sort into a variation on mathematical induction the lines between the two subjects are made crystal clear.
I would agree that a pretty solid understanding of mathematics is required for this book, and I can see why someone coming from a typical undergraduate education in cs would find it difficult and intimidating to tackle this book. It definitely does not teach you how to program or the basics of object oriented design as it proceeds to teach you about structure and design of algorithms. I can also understand why someone hoping to simply get a job as a "programmer" or "software engineer" would not necessarily be well served by this book. The authors are very upfront on this note though, and specifically warn prospective students that they are not going to teach them how to "code" solutions to common cs problems. What they are going to teach them is the fundamentals of algorithm analysis and design. How valuable prospective students find this approach is going to depend entirely on what exactly they hope to do with their understanding of computer science. If you want to learn how to code and be paid to be a developer (not a bad line of work by any stretch of the imagination) you might want to look else where.
For someone coming from a mathematics background though (whether it's an applied field such as statistics or numerical analysis or a pure field like abstract algebra or analysis) this is an excellent introduction to the field of computer science. If you are coming from a math background the analysis and structure of algorithms as presented in this book will instantly click. For me personally I loved the fact that the underlining mathematical basis of cs did not get lost in details of coding or working within certain developmental environments like Eclipse. Again, probably not an ideal choice for someone looking to learn this particular subjects, but definitely a good choice for math majors (or prospective cs grad students).
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Reviews with images
Obtuse Textbook Contains Zero Value
I had such high expectations for "Cormen" or "CLRS" as it is often referred to. On the back of the book some reviewers call it the bible of algorithms, and another mentions it is a complete encyclopedia of algorithms. After reading the text completely I was incredibly disappointed.Starting from when the authors introduce the very first algorithm on page 18 which is Insertion Sort. The outer loop variable is named j, and the inner loop variable is named i. Never once in my programming career have I seen someone switch i and j like this; i always comes before j. The array itself is just named 'A', rather than something meaningful like 'items'.One of the very next algorithms in the book is the merge function for merge sort on page 31. The function signature is named MERGE(A, p, q, r) and there are temporary variables of n1, n2, and k inside of the functions. I have attached photos so you can see how it looks. If you look at any other implementation online, they name the variables much better such as 'left' and 'right' rather than 'p' and 'q'.This is supposed to be an introductory book for students yet the authors themselves cannot even name variables properly or explain anything simply. You will be much better served by going to Wikipedia and reading algorithms there.People who say this is a complete encyclopedia of algorithms are sorely mistaken. There is zero information about Merkle trees (hash trees), which were discovered in 1979. The reason I know this is because I tried to use the book as an encyclopedia a few times, and found there were no entries for some of the most widely used algorithms in industry.The authors themselves say the chapters can be read completely independently, and that there will be little continuity between the chapters. As you read the book the order seems to make no sense at all. They introduce the origins of the word algorithm, and Turing machines only after page 1000 in the book.There is very little history in the book about when and why an algorithm was discovered, and the book makes zero effort to explain anything chronologically. At the end of each chapters there are foot notes for other academic texts. They often mention you should check Knuth for the history. Knuth wrote The Art Of Computer Programming which is so much superior to this book in every way. It is a shame that Knuth's book is not the standard college text book for computer science.This book is responsible for an entire generation of programmers hating algorithms. It seems many professors just recommend this book without reading it themselves. I was wondering if these professors assign this book just to appear to sophisticated to their peers. The book is not an introduction at all; it is more like notes from one math professor to another where they cannot agree on terminology.Lastly, I cannot state enough how terrible this book is to read. I almost quit the book many times because of it is dryness. The example problems offered have something like "Professor Bob went to the store..." These four authors could not even figure out how to craft any interesting problems themselves.Stay far away from this book unless you are absolutely forced to read it. Unfortunately, many are being forced to read this atrocity, as the professors heap praise on each other for their supposed brilliance.
Top reviews from other countries
Luis Carlos Absalon Rojas Torres
Nao é por acaso que é a Biblia dos Algoritmos neh
Reviewed in Brazil on December 13, 2021
