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Principles of Algorithmic Problem Solving (2017) [pdf] (kth.se)
306 points by ingve on Oct 23, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 17 comments



Skimming through the ToC this looks similar to Antti Laaksonen's Competitive Programmer's Handbook [1], which I would also recommend.

[1] https://cses.fi/book/index.html


Thanks for linking this. This is exactly the type of book I was trying to find a couple of months ago.


Lots of Algorithm books I've come across do not have a lot of exercises and focus heavily on proofs. It's great to see that this book does have a lot of exercises.


I've found the best way to read those sorts of books is to treat the proofs as the exercises, i.e. doing the proof blind and using the proof inside as a check.


True, but the proofs themselves are very much explained with mathematical notations. Personally, for me, It's been over 5 years since I left college and solved any math problems. I don't remember what the symbols mean anymore.

I've to constantly keep googling what the symbols mean and takes a lot of time, turns discouraging to keep going through the material. So there's a deeper study going on in there just to understand, say- what an asymptotic notation means in the algorithmic world.

I definitely would love to dive deep into math since it is the foundation of algorithms, but it's good to have source material with beginner exercises. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong places...

I agree with your point, taking the proof as exercises will make things challenging for you.


I would love to know when a none draft version of this document is expected to be available. Is this the latest version?


> the latest version of this draft, available at http://csc.kth.se/~jsannemo/slask/main.pdf

Yes.


Thank you for the link :-) I see the link to the latest version was actually referenced right in the disclaimer in the PDF. I should have noticed that :-P


thank you, sir


I plan to finish the first edition sometime next year :)


There is an error on p150 & p151. The text says: " The recursion tree for the case T = 10 can be seen in Figure 9.1" & "Figure 9.1: The recursion tree for the Change-making problem with T = 10." But the figure itself uses T = 8

Also " Figure 9.2: The recursion tree for the Change-making problem with T = 10, with duplicate calls merged. " The tree starts with 8 as well.


I remember being in a Spotify hackathon with Johan many years ago. Fantastic problem solver. Happy to see his work here.

You wrote on my blog post on the hackathon at the time (2011) that I had "some promise for algorithmic problem solving". Really inspired me to dive into CS.


I trying to find a the blog link.


The book is extra impressive because the author is 24 years old. :) I don't mean that in any disparaging way. Johan is already an insanely accomplished developer who has gone and will go very far.


It is amazing to see my school here :) Horraaaayyyyyy


Is there an epub version of this?


+1




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