Rating: 
Summary: Terrible Textbook
Review: I am 3rd year undergraduate student and just finished taking a class that requires this book. This book was so unhelpful in trying to do assignments or even understand the text. As a matter of fact you will be in chapter 8 trying to reference an algorithm in chapter 1. You end up spending to much time trying to find information that is not even in this book.This book is GARBAGE!!!!! If your professor requires this book. Drop the class immediately!!!! I feel this book is an insult to any professor who teaches Design and Analysis of Algorithms!!! Someone needs to ask the authors if we all can have our money back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad could be better
Review: I am a CS major and I was required to get this book for my Algorithms class, I wasn't too dissapointed with it but I didn't see much in it either. The major flaw is this book would have to be the code, I know it is a algorithms book and code shouldn't matter. I like the idea of psuedo java code. But the fact that the code is much more complicated than it has to be can make it tough for some people to follow it. Also throughout the book there are a lot of "refer to blah", and blah is a couple chapters back. So you spend a minute looking for blah and when you finally find it you forget why you are looking at it. The book does have a good but quick intro to the math needed throughout the rest of the book, but it might be a little too quick for some. For almost every algorithm there is a thorough explanation, proof, and whatever else is needed. All in all this isn't a bad book but you could probably find better.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad could be better
Review: I am a CS major and I was required to get this book for my Algorithms class, I wasn't too dissapointed with it but I didn't see much in it either. The major flaw is this book would have to be the code, I know it is a algorithms book and code shouldn't matter. I like the idea of psuedo java code. But the fact that the code is much more complicated than it has to be can make it tough for some people to follow it. Also throughout the book there are a lot of "refer to blah", and blah is a couple chapters back. So you spend a minute looking for blah and when you finally find it you forget why you are looking at it. The book does have a good but quick intro to the math needed throughout the rest of the book, but it might be a little too quick for some. For almost every algorithm there is a thorough explanation, proof, and whatever else is needed. All in all this isn't a bad book but you could probably find better.
Rating:
Summary: Good general view of most searching and sorting algorithms
Review: I think this book gives a good explanation of the searching and sorting algorithms. As a student I found the section on NP-Hard problems difficult to follow along with. I would recommend Cormen Rivest Algorithms book.
Rating:
Summary: A Student's Review
Review: I'm a 4th year undergraduate student in computer science and I just finished the Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms course that was based on this book. I thought the book was horrible. It did little to help me understand anything but general ideas. Reading this book is like reading a volume of mathematical proofs. The authors speak in symbols. What makes it much worse is that every page makes multiple references to other portions of the text that aren't on the facing pages. They might be one page turn away, but very often they are a few pages, or even chapters away! The only reason I would keep this book is for the list of topics it covers.
Rating: 
Summary: A pretty good book in my experience
Review: Note that the Preface starts with "This book is intended for an upper-division or graduate course..." and should be seen as such. In my School, we have more emphasis than average on algorithm analysis, so we are able to use this book at 3rd-year level (final year of our degree), but without a strong background, the book would fit a graduate course better. Some of the criticisms relate to use of pseudocode and inadequate diagrams. The latter is maybe a criticism of an introductory book, but is not applicable to an advanced book. Eye candy fools the reader into thinking they understand more than they do. Pseudocode as used in the book should not be a serious problem for more advanced courses. Detail is not left out to the extent that is sometimes the case in pseudocode. In any case, I worry about students who expect to be spoon fed. If you have to derive your own algorithm, the details aren't all provided for you -- you need to work them all out. I do however find it strange that in the 3rd edition, the authors changed to a Java-like pseudocode but didn't adjust array indexing to 0.
My only reason for not giving the book a 5 is that I have found a number of errors in the string matching algorithms. But even this is not unusual in algorithms texts; I would hope all readers would test (if not prove correct) any textbook algorithm before using it. Another thing I do not quite agree with is the relatively informal treatment of solving recurrences (using recursion trees) -- I would prefer that more formal approaches like the characteristic polynomial method were used.
On the whole, this book has a good balance between breadth and depth. Other than the bugs introduced in the string matching algorithms and the inadequate conversion to a Java-like notation, it is a significant improvement on the 2nd edition.
I recommend it strongly for courses where students already have a good algorithms background, and are ready for a more advanced course.
The last book I used, Fundamentals of Algorithmics by Brassard and Bratley, was much harder for my students. It developed a lot of mathematical material that was not used much in subsequent examples, and they found explanations hard to follow.
Rating:
Summary: Psuedocode is not a viable language
Review: This book reads worse than a man page. Having taken the class from one of the authors, I now know why. Take the advise of the other reader, and don't buy extra firewood. The examples are confusing, the diagrams and text don't line up, and to do the exercises you spend more time flipping between pages than you do UNDERSTANDING.
Rating: 
Summary: A clean text dump, without annoying images.
Review: This book really didn't give much at all. Much because of its useless explainations, that are probably really juicy if you already know it and pretty worthless if you don't... I didn't. Just one thing to do, attend all classes if you got this book for class litterature, and if you live in Canada or as I do in Sweden, use it as fire wood-substitute when it's cold... (Hmm does layout spell "n-o-t-e-p-a-d"?)
Rating:
Summary: A Student's Review
Review: This has to be the single worst textbook I have ever seen, in computer science or any other subject, and I don't even know where to begin with my complaints. First, the book is INCREDIBLY hard to follow since they constantly refere to earlier figures and algorithms simply by giving a number for it(not even a lousy page number), and you have to spend 75% of the time searching for it, only to find another one listed 2 sentences later. You would think they could have at least been courteous enough to provide a page number. Still it doesn't beat question 7.24 which states, "use the algorithm", the algorithm as it turns out is printed 20 pages earlier, but I suppose that they figured you have the ability to read their mind and should have known that. Seconly, they butcher the Java language. They just use sloppy code and static objects wherever possible, which is the polar opposite of what Java is supposed to be about, but then again, given the wretched state of the rest of the book, this comes as no surprise. Well, since I only have a limited space to fill, I'll bring it to a close. Do NOT under any circumstances consider purchasing this book, a dancing dog could teach you more about data structures and algorithms!
Rating:
Summary: I cannot even believe that someone printed this garbage!
Review: This has to be the single worst textbook I have ever seen, in computer science or any other subject, and I don't even know where to begin with my complaints. First, the book is INCREDIBLY hard to follow since they constantly refere to earlier figures and algorithms simply by giving a number for it(not even a lousy page number), and you have to spend 75% of the time searching for it, only to find another one listed 2 sentences later. You would think they could have at least been courteous enough to provide a page number. Still it doesn't beat question 7.24 which states, "use the algorithm", the algorithm as it turns out is printed 20 pages earlier, but I suppose that they figured you have the ability to read their mind and should have known that. Seconly, they butcher the Java language. They just use sloppy code and static objects wherever possible, which is the polar opposite of what Java is supposed to be about, but then again, given the wretched state of the rest of the book, this comes as no surprise. Well, since I only have a limited space to fill, I'll bring it to a close. Do NOT under any circumstances consider purchasing this book, a dancing dog could teach you more about data structures and algorithms!
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