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Gre Computer Science

Gre Computer Science

List Price: $23.95
Your Price: $16.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Lets be fair, it does what it is supposed to do.
Review: Having read all the reviews I am not quite sure why people are so unhappy. Yes, this is not an exciting page turner, but it is not supposed to be. It sais on the cover "4 Full-Length Exams" and this is what you get, sample exams and explanations for questions. There will never be a book that will tell you how to "crack" the CS GRE, because such a book would have to contain the information of about five textbooks.

The only way to study for a CS GRE is to use this book to get an idea of the questions (plus the sample test ETS sends you). If you cannot answer the question then go to a textbook and read the corresponding chapters, so when you come back you can answer the question.

Ideally, you are a CS Junior in Undergrad and know that you will be taking this test. This way study for this from the start, while still in class.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: f(n) = n is a constant funciton
Review: Just so no one studying for the test gets confused, f(n) = n is in fact a constant funciton.

In this context constant means that its execution time does not vary based on the imput.

Compare this to a bubble short algorithm where the excecution time would vary accourding to the square of the number of items.

So 10 item would take 100c time units to sort, 1000 items would take 1 million!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Can there really be no alternative?
Review: OK, this book is terrible, like everyone said. I didn't buy it: I got it free from a colleague at work. I used it for the sole purpose of practicing answering CS-type questions quickly and filling in the bubbles. Here are a few of my pet peeves:

1) The book assumes an expert-level knowledge of PASCAL and no knowledge of C. The sample test from ETS requred only basic C and PASCAL. Since I didn't know PASCAL at all (who does these days?) until I studied for the GRE, I really hope that the ETS test is closer to the real thing.

2) Questions that are far more difficult (both in terms of knowledge required and time required to answer) than anything in the ETS sample GRE. There are questions where the "explanation" is more than 2 pages long.

3) Errors. To take one example I just met, they think that f(n) = n is a constant function.

4) Ambiguity/unstated assumptions in question.

To sum up, yes, this book [bites]. Don't pay any money for it. And come on -- will someone out there write a decent GRE CS review book??


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