Re: Algorithm book recommendation?

From: Howard Kaikow (kaikow_at_standards.com)
Date: 02/07/05 

Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 10:48:19 -0500

An easier book is Rod Stephens Ready-to-Run Visual Basic Algorithms, 2nd
Edition. 

-- 
http://www.standards.com/; See Howard Kaikow's web site.
"AlgoMan" <algoman@mailinator.com> wrote in message
news:1107588033.133835.266310@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
>     I have been trying my hand at programming for a year as an amateur.
>
> However, I have no formal education in computer science or mathematics.
> Hence, now I am learning algorithms & data structures from some
> textbooks.
>
>      People recommend "Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas Cormen etc
> & Sedgewicks algorithm books. Unfortunately, IMHO, these books are not
> easy to
> understand for someone who doesn't have a formal Math/CompScience
> backgroup.
> I think you need to know a lot of mathematics, mathematical notations
> etc for
> understanding Cormen. As far as Sedgewick is concerned, his coding is
> rather
> complicated to understand for a beginner, he applies a twist to even
> simple
> algorithms which make them slightly difficult to understand.
>
>   For eg. most other books, explain the Towers of Hanoi solution with
> this function prototype.
>
>   hanoi(N, Source, Dest, Aux)
>
> Sedgewick has
>   hanoi(int N, int d)
>
> Had to read it many times to understand what he is doing here, whereas
> the
> Source, Dest thingy is very intuitive to understand for a beginner.
> Sedgwick tries to make all his programs very small, elegant & compact,
> which
> make them a little difficult to understand for a beginner. Other than
> that,
> Sedgewick goes deep into different analysis, which are very difficult
> to
> understand.
>
>   I came across the book "Programming Pearls" by Jon Bentley. This
> books explains algorithms in a very very beautiful & elegant manner for
> a beginner.
> Things which I have found very very complex in other books, I
> understood in
> 1st reading with Bentley. Unfortunately, his books do not cover
> algorithms
> & data structures exhaustively, but are just a collection of papers,
> some of
> which concentrate on algorithms.
>
>   Are there are any books on Data Structures & Algorithms which cover
> this
> subject in the same manner that Bentley does in his papers?
>

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