The Algorithm Design Manual
by Steven S. Skiena
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Book Reviews of The Algorithm Design Manual
Book Review: Best Intro To Algorithms
Summary: 5 Stars
I've read through the first half of the book, and am now at the catalog of algorithms that makes up the second half, and I've really enjoyed the book so far.
Most books on algorithms take a very formal, math heavy approach in which they present, analyze and prove things about a somewhat arbitrary collection of algorithms. There's usually no mention of real world applications.
This book, however, takes a different approach, and serves as a guide book for using algorithms in the real world. There's a heavy emphasis on formulating problems in terms of existing, solved problems. If you can "map" your problem to one with a known solution, then you can use the proven, existing solution to solve your problem. To emphasize that point, roughly the entire second half of the book is a catalog of known problems and solutions, with references to software libraries, books and other sources of information.
I also love that the example code is in C. Too many books give example code in languages with a lot of overhead, like Java, and end up obscuring the important parts with a ton of object-oriented crap. Yes - OOP is nice, but unless I'm reading a book on OOP, I don't want to dig through 30 lines of irrelevant boilerplate just to find the 10 lines relevant to the algorithm.
That said, it's not the best code in the world. Some of the snippets could be explained better. And there were a few stylistic issues, such as leaving off function return types and a bunch of global variables, that I didn't like, but I'm willing to forgive those because it's not a book on C, and the lack of syntactic clutter made the algorithm easier to see.
I also thought chapter nine was a bit too long. A good portion of the chapter is spent reducing various NP-complete problems to other NP-complete problems. Interesting, but it was a bit too theoretical, and didn't really fit with the with the rest of the book.
Book Review: Not always an easy read
Summary: 3 Stars
This book isn't always the easiest to understand. Consider the explanation of Djikstra's Algorithm on p. 206 of the 2nd ed:
"Djikstra's algorithm is the method of choice for finding shortest paths in an edge-and/or vertex-weighted graph. Given a particular start vertex s, it finds the shortest path from s to every other vertex in the graph, including your desired destination t.
"Suppose the shortest path from s to t in graph G passes through a particular intermediate vertex x. Clearly, this path must contain the shortest path from s to x as its prefix, because if not, we could shorten our s-to-t path by using the shorter s-to-x prefix. Thus, we must compute the shortest path from s to x before we find the path from s to t.
"Djikstra's algorithm proceeds in a series of rounds, where each round establishes the shortest path from s to some new vertex. Specifically, x is the vertex that minimizes dist(s, vi) + w(vi, x) over all unfinished 1 <= i <= n, where w(i, j) is the length of the edge from i to j, and dist(i, j) is the length of the shortest path between them."
Book Review: Could be called "The Joy of Algorithms"
Summary: 5 Stars
My Dad loved to cook and one of his favorite cookbooks was "The Joy of Cooking." By the time he died, the pages of his copy were stained and dusted with flour from being constantly used in his kitchen.
Why did he like it so much? Because not only did it have great recipes, it also explored the basic ingredients and methods and told interesting stories about cooking.
That's why "The Algorithm Design Manual" could be called "The Joy of Algorithms." Not only has it become my "goto" book for finding the right algorithmic approach to a problem, it is a joy to read with Skiena's "war stories" and his lively writing style.
Just like my Dad's "The Joy of Cooking" was never far from his stove, "The Algorithm Design Manual" will never be far from my computer.
Book Review: Absolutely great algoriths textbook and reference.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a unique book, about 2/3 of the way from textbook to reference manual. It is very well written. It assumes competentcy in the analysis of algorithms and reviews a wide range algorithmic techniques. Many extensions are outlined as exercises. An unusual and interesting feature is the many "war stories" about the use of algorithms in the real world. Skiena does not shy away from stating what he thinks are good approaches - and otherwise. I am the proud owner of a couple dozen algorithms books, and this is probably the most useful of the bunch.Book Review: Basic Algorithms and Data Structures
Summary: 5 Stars
The only think that I do not fully like of that book is the second part (The Hitchhiker's Guide to Algorithms). Why? Because I think that the book can be stream-lined just removing those 300 pages. Still I think that this kind of long appendix is interesting but Skiena should consider to leave that information in the already exiting "Stony Brook Algorithm Repository" (see http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/).
5 stars... but could be 6 without all that clutter.