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Ask HN: What's the best algorithms and data structures online course?

273 points| zabana | 8 years ago

36 comments

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[+] jfaucett|8 years ago|reply
I know its not an online course and its a relatively massive tome, but I'd recommend just working through "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen/Leiserston/Rivest/Stein [1].

This book has great explanations and exercises for everything you could want to learn from the basics of sorting and algorithmic design and analysis, to graph algorithms, linear programming, and dynamic programming.

It lacks some degree of depth on more advanced topics, but if you work your way through it and actually implement what you read and do the exercises, you will be more than well enough equipped to take on just about any problem.

The key is going to be to actually implement what you read/learn, I think it might take you a little more time than watching an online course, but in the long run it will give you a much deeper knowledge of the material.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Corm...

[+] osoba|8 years ago|reply
In addition to the Stanford courses mentioned in another comment, there are also two Princeton courses taught by Sedgewick https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~250165 and the MIT course taught by Demaine https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
[+] sarumpaet|8 years ago|reply
Sedgewick also has some great books.
[+] ahamedirshad123|8 years ago|reply
Don't know about the best, but I learned a lot from these two courses.

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+...

https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+...

[+] deepGem|8 years ago|reply
Tim Roughgarden is a fantastic teacher. I personally love his style and speed. He throws in some humor here and there and makes learning a lot of fun. His lectures on graphs are absolutely brilliant.

This same course is available on Coursera as well.

[+] zabana|8 years ago|reply
Thanks, I've looked at the syllabus and it seems to be exactly what I'm looking for (Asymptotic analysis, and coverage of the most widely known algorithms).
[+] aretaic|8 years ago|reply
Second this recommendation really enjoyed these courses as well. Tim explains everything in an easy to follow way.
[+] geritol|8 years ago|reply
I can also really recommend these courses. Really like how Tim teaches!
[+] icc97|8 years ago|reply
It's not really a course but I found InterviewBit [0] a great resource. It structures everything around moving from simpler to more complex data structures and algorithms. It's kind of learning by doing lots and lots of questions. You have to complete enough problems in one section to move onto the next.

I spent a hundred hours going through the various tests and it showed the power of functional programming / recursion. The questions that took me much longer than average were the ones where I had a bug and had to track it down. The recursive problems didn't suffer from this, ie I would get the solution pretty much correct first time. This could just have been the questions / my programming style but I found it eye opening.

[0]: https://www.interviewbit.com/

[+] vthallam|8 years ago|reply
If your eventual goal after learning the basics is programming questions for interviews, there are a tons of resources like leetcode, interviewbit, geeksforgeeks. I started writing some of the FAQ with explanations here[1], check it out to see if it is of any help for you.

[1] : http://letstalkalgorithms.com/

[+] ninjakeyboard|8 years ago|reply
The princeton one on coursera is really great and easy to read. Buy the book and take the course. Sedgewick is my hero. It doesn't require a lot of math in contrast to the Stanford coursera one. It's much easier for the general person to follow IMO. https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1
[+] southphillyman|8 years ago|reply
Is it wise to do any of these courses without taking a course in linear algebra first? I started watching Skiena's algorithm course on youtube recently and he seemed to really emphasize finishing a course in linear algebra before taking any algorithm course. Thoughts?
[+] metaphyze|8 years ago|reply
Just FYI, Kahn Academy's Linear Algebra course is great. Very thorough and well-thought-out.
[+] 3uclid|8 years ago|reply
No, I don't believe so (from my experience as a CS undergrad).
[+] henrik_w|8 years ago|reply
I took both of Tim Roughgarden's algorithm courses on Coursera, and in my opinion you don't need to know linear algebra to complete them.
[+] westurner|8 years ago|reply
These aren't courses, but from answers to "Ask HN: Recommended course/website/book to learn data structure and algorithms" :

Data Structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure

Algorithm:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

Big O notation:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation

Big-O Cheatsheet: http://bigocheatsheet.com

Coding Interview University > Data Structures: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university/blob/...

OSSU: Open Source Society University > Core CS > Core Theory > "Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part I" [&2] https://github.com/ossu/computer-science/blob/master/README....

"Algorithms, 4th Edition" (2011; Sedgewick, Wayne): https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/

Complexity Zoo > Petting Zoo (P, NP,): https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Petting_Zoo

While perusing awesome-awesomeness [1], I found awesome-algorithms [2] , algovis [3], and awesome-big-o [4].

[1] https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-awesomeness

[2] https://github.com/tayllan/awesome-algorithms

[3] https://github.com/enjalot/algovis

[4] https://github.com/okulbilisim/awesome-big-o