The Algorithm Design Manual |  | Author: Steven S. Skiena
Publisher: Springer
List Price: $79.95
Buy New: $52.66
as of 11/25/2009 06:40 CST details
You Save: $27.29 (34%)
New (26) Used (13) from $47.91
Seller: pbshop
Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 8476
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2nd
Pages: 736
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 1848000693
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9781848000698
ASIN: 1848000693
Publication Date: August 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This expanded and updated second edition of a classic bestseller continues to take the "mystery" out of designing and analyzing algorithms and their efficacy and efficiency. Expanding on the highly successful formula of the first edition, the book now serves as the primary textbook of choice for any algorithm design course while maintaining its status as the premier practical reference guide to algorithms. NEW: (1) Incorporates twice the tutorial material and exercises. (2) Provides full online support for lecturers, and a completely updated and improved website component with lecture slides, audio and video. (3) Contains a highly unique catalog of the 75 most important algorithmic problems. (4) Includes new "war stories" and "interview problems", relating experiences from real-world applications. Written by a well-known, IEEE Computer Science teaching-award winner, this new edition is an essential learning tool for students needing a solid grounding in algorithms, as well as a uniquely comprehensive text/reference for professionals.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
 Best Intro To Algorithms October 26, 2009
Jeremiah LaRocco (Broomfield, CO)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've read through the first half of the book, and am now at the catalog of algorithms that makes up the second half, and I've really enjoyed the book so far.
Most books on algorithms take a very formal, math heavy approach in which they present, analyze and prove things about a somewhat arbitrary collection of algorithms. There's usually no mention of real world applications.
This book, however, takes a different approach, and serves as a guide book for using algorithms in the real world. There's a heavy emphasis on formulating problems in terms of existing, solved problems. If you can "map" your problem to one with a known solution, then you can use the proven, existing solution to solve your problem. To emphasize that point, roughly the entire second half of the book is a catalog of known problems and solutions, with references to software libraries, books and other sources of information.
I also love that the example code is in C. Too many books give example code in languages with a lot of overhead, like Java, and end up obscuring the important parts with a ton of object-oriented crap. Yes - OOP is nice, but unless I'm reading a book on OOP, I don't want to dig through 30 lines of irrelevant boilerplate just to find the 10 lines relevant to the algorithm.
That said, it's not the best code in the world. Some of the snippets could be explained better. And there were a few stylistic issues, such as leaving off function return types and a bunch of global variables, that I didn't like, but I'm willing to forgive those because it's not a book on C, and the lack of syntactic clutter made the algorithm easier to see.
I also thought chapter nine was a bit too long. A good portion of the chapter is spent reducing various NP-complete problems to other NP-complete problems. Interesting, but it was a bit too theoretical, and didn't really fit with the with the rest of the book.
 1998 edition for Kindle October 16, 2009
Michael Vashkevich (Boston, MA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Just download a sample and see for yourself. This "Kindle Edition" is a pure cheating. They "kindeled" an old 1998 edition for $49. The 2008 edition (printed) for $61 is MUCH more useful.
The only algo book you need October 14, 2009
Steven Koh (Singapore)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The writing is clear and concise with lively examples and full explanation.
Given the abstractness of the topic and problems, most algo books explain the thinking process with ambiguity. This is where this book shines.
A sort of atlas for what is possible using the integer half of your computer machine June 14, 2009
Scott C. Locklin (Berkeley CA)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm a numerics guy. This means I am generally interested in solving problems with solutions which are well modeled by real numbers. Algorithms involving real numbers mostly run on the floating point side of your CPU. I got interested in this sort of thing because my main intellectual interests involve solving problems with involve the "real world." Puns aside; I like thinking about problems in dynamics, signal processing, modeling quantum mechanical systems: the things most people think of as encompassing "reality." Computers can't really model real numbers, but then, a lot of the time, real numbers are just a convenience for modeling things which work long a logarithmic length scale. "Real" stuff works this way. Scientists who concern themselves with this sort of problem will often learn all about clever tricks for using the floating point part of their processor as a result.
Eventually, if you get deep enough, you need to take full advantage of the integer side of the machine. The integer side of the machine has been the primary concern of computer scientists over the years, since that's how computers really work inside. Guys like me who learned all about the floating point end of things are often in the dark as to what is possible in Integer-land. This book is an outstanding guidebook to what is possible using integer related tricks. In this book, you'll learn all about "big O," graph traversals, trees, hash functions, search and P versus NP. A lot of guys like me have only a vague grasp that such things exist. This is a great book for educating yourself as to what is possible, and the general principles of how all this stuff works. What is more, the text is interesting, profusely illustrated with useful visual aids and is written in a wonderfully clear style. I wish such a thing existed for the floating point side of things (Numerical Recipes don't count; it's a much different book), but it was certainly very helpful to me that this exists. A must read if you've never taken an "algorithms and data structures" course, but use a computer at a serious level.
Well organized details June 6, 2009
Tech Book Addict (MA, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I needed to understand some best fit algorithms and alternatives without reading a whole numbing book. The organization of this book and the right level of detail help me get there.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
|
|
|
|
