Computer Algorithms/C++

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Summary: Computer Algorithms/C++ offers algorithm design and analysis
Review: "Computer Algorithms/C++" is an evolution of an earlier book entitled "Fundamentals of Computer Algorithms". The book was originally published in 1978 and it has continued to be used successfully ever since. There are many translations into languages other than English.

The book was the first to organize the study of algorithms around the concept of design strategy. Thus there are chapters on divide-and-conquer, greedy method, dynamic programming, traversal-and-search, backtracking, branch-and-bound. Each chapter covers the design strategy in a general way and then offers several examples of problems where the best solution was an algorithm based upon the design strategy of that chapter. The book also covers theoretical topics in algorithms such as the determination of lower bounds and NP-Completeness.

This book is traditionally used for a graduate level course on algorithms. However some schools use it for their undergraduate algorithms co! urse.

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Summary: Obviously not for the faint of heart.
Review: ... If the primary complaint against this text is that the authors have not provided enough C++ source code examples for the types of algorithms explained, take a look at the price tag. At a list price of [price], one can logically deduce that this text is for a university audience, emphasizing the theory behind the algorithms, as well as the synthesis it takes for you to generate modified versions from the templates presented. If you are looking for a more "how to"-oriented text (you know, the kind that "spoon feeds" you) with excessive source code examples, you definitely should look for another text. Nevertheless, I consider this book to be both highly appropriate and effective for its intended audience.

Rating:
Summary: Obviously not for the faint of heart.
Review: ... If the primary complaint against this text is that the authors have not provided enough C++ source code examples for the types of algorithms explained, take a look at the price tag. At a list price of [price], one can logically deduce that this text is for a university audience, emphasizing the theory behind the algorithms, as well as the synthesis it takes for you to generate modified versions from the templates presented. If you are looking for a more "how to"-oriented text (you know, the kind that "spoon feeds" you) with excessive source code examples, you definitely should look for another text. Nevertheless, I consider this book to be both highly appropriate and effective for its intended audience.

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Summary: Buy something else..
Review: Don't waste your money on this text, it is rotten. I had it for a class and found this book to do very little in aiding the learning process due to its lack of any sort of coherent explaination. I ended up purchasing another text and used it from then and until now, after college.

this is the only textbook i have ever sold back after the semester.

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Summary: A student use this book to learn algorithms
Review: I'm a student at department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University.We took the course "Algorithms",and used this book as a text book.After a semister learning, i never heard any good comments for this book.The most word given to this book is"This book can make easy to hard!"We'll never choose this book as a text book again.

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Summary: A fair book on algorithms in C++
Review: This book discusses algorithms in computer science but does integrate enough C++ code into the text, in spite of its title. Also, a lot of the code still has remnants of C philosophy, such as #define statements, in spite of the authors frequent use of "class" in their code. Buy this book with caution, as it is very expensive.

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Summary: The best aide to fail a college Algorithms course
Review: This book is a textbook for a Computer Science course "Analysis of Algorithms" in Queens College, CUNY. The entire class suffers, because the book isn't readeable. The language isn't English!

Authors strive to make even the simplest algorithms difficult to understand. The code examples have almost no comments and are typed in a messy disordered fashion. Mathematical analysis requires huge background in analytical mathematics and prior knowledge of everything it talks about. Proofs of theorems are not clear. Where the authors state something like "... clearly this is so-and-so... " the argument isn't even logical!

Very often they don't even describe an algorithm - they just say "the algorithm is presented by the code on page ..." (this page is usually 10 pages away). The number of typographical mistakes is enormous. The examples are based on bizarre numbers and data structures.

Don't ever ever ever consider buying this book! For college professors: please don't use this book as a textbook in your class unless you want to have a "D" average at the end of the semester.