Rating: 
Summary: Terse and selective in materials covered.
Review: A good introduction to the study of algorithms with its terse description and selective content, especially for a one-semester course. However, I highly recommend some additional reference material to supplement and provide more indepth coverage to topics highlighted in this book. My personal favorite supplementary reference is Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest's excellent Introduction to Algorithms (ISBN 0-262-03141-8 MIT Press)
Rating: 
Summary: Covers a lot, but bigger aint always better
Review: Although this book covers a large area its coverage is somewhat incomplete. The first thing you notice is the bad formatting of this book making the examples and explanations hard to follow. Mathematical proofs and algorithms are placed, bit by bit, into a paragraph of text i.e. "...When we substitute -x for x in (9.8), we get P(-x)=Pe(x^2)+(-x)Po(x^2). To evaluate (9.7), we need to compute P(x-i) and P(-xi), for 0<i<n/2. To do that..." --Udi Manber, Intro to Algorithms This combined with the assumption that the reader already understands the subject and the maths behind it makes it an unsuitable introductory text. Its only redeeming feature is its wide range of topics, if this is the only Algorithmics book you are likely to by at this time look elsewhere, if you need a second or third book to clarify some points this may just be the one you are after.
Rating:
Summary: Covers a lot, but bigger aint always better
Review: Although this book covers a large area its coverage is somewhat incomplete. The first thing you notice is the bad formatting of this book making the examples and explanations hard to follow. Mathematical proofs and algorithms are placed, bit by bit, into a paragraph of text i.e. "...When we substitute -x for x in (9.8), we get P(-x)=Pe(x^2)+(-x)Po(x^2). To evaluate (9.7), we need to compute P(x-i) and P(-xi), for 0This combined with the assumption that the reader already understands the subject and the maths behind it makes it an unsuitable introductory text. Its only redeeming feature is its wide range of topics, if this is the only Algorithmics book you are likely to by at this time look elsewhere, if you need a second or third book to clarify some points this may just be the one you are after.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to follow, few examples and assumes you are a math wiz
Review: It is a good book for introductory course to computer algorithms. It is very suitable for computer science students. It is written in simple language which makes it easy for people who have no background in computer algorithms. The book has few errors which I don't they were corrected.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book for computer scienctists
Review: It is a good book for introductory course to computer algorithms. It is very suitable for computer science students. It is written in simple language which makes it easy for people who have no background in computer algorithms. The book has few errors which I don't they were corrected.
Rating: 
Summary: fantastic
Review: It's a very perfect book to become familiar with main
methods of producing effective algorithms.
Rating:
Summary: Not good for beginners
Review: Most books I have read on the subject seem to be simply a collection of algorithmic tricks and techniques. There's no single universal idea, except for this book by Udi Manber. The cover picture says it all. In my opinion, the most fundamental and universal concept in algorithmic design is the idea of induction, recursion, and building bigger desired solutions from smaller already-constructed ones. The experts establish this as their intuition and perhaps take it for granted. But as a beginning algorist, when you have to ask yourself how do I solve/optimize/approximate this problem, I think you'll find this idea so important. This book attempts to make this concept your algorithmic intuition, and that's I think is a good thing.That said, it should be read along with other books in algorithms design and analysis.
Rating:
Summary: a good book
Review: Most books I have read on the subject seem to be simply a collection of algorithmic tricks and techniques. There's no single universal idea, except for this book by Udi Manber. The cover picture says it all. In my opinion, the most fundamental and universal concept in algorithmic design is the idea of induction, recursion, and building bigger desired solutions from smaller already-constructed ones. The experts establish this as their intuition and perhaps take it for granted. But as a beginning algorist, when you have to ask yourself how do I solve/optimize/approximate this problem, I think you'll find this idea so important. This book attempts to make this concept your algorithmic intuition, and that's I think is a good thing. That said, it should be read along with other books in algorithms design and analysis.
Rating:
Summary: Not good for beginners
Review: The book is complete and correct, no argument there. However, I had a lot of trouble learning from it. I had to re-read the same paragraph a number of times in order to derive comprehensive meaning from the author's scant explanations. The author usually walks through a sample problem, but then provides little or no guidance for solving an arbitrary problem of the same type. Likewise, although the book centers on induction, it was extremely difficult to follow with no prior induction education. The author often presents the answer to some given problem with words like "obviously" or "clearly" without making things at all clear or obvious to the student. I kept wishing that the author wouldn't be so tight-lipped and would spend some extra time clarifying the issues at hand.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent supplemental book
Review: This book is a great supplement and not a bad introduction book either. If you find that you still have holes in your knowledge after reading the Cormen book (as I did) you'll find that many of them can be filled with this book. This book also has a better chapter on NP Complete problems than the Cormen book.
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