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pseudonom- | 7 years ago

Does anyone have any impressions on how this compares to CLRS? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms)

discuss

order

rbkillea|7 years ago

By Ctrl+F'ing, I find 5 mentions of the word "master", none of which are the master theorem. I prefer this to CLRS as, while it's a neat trick, it tends to result in a bunch of people memorising the cases (and taking a "because the book told me to" level of understanding away from that part of the course).

jefferickson|7 years ago

Exactly. The students should be the masters, not the theorem.

zawerf|7 years ago

In particular are there any new materials that has been invented or widely adopted since the older textbooks?

For example, bloom filters were rarely taught maybe 10 years ago but probabilistic data structures are now pretty mandatory in a data structure course.

Just wondering if there are sections in this book covering cutting edge stuff for people already familiar with traditional algo

jefferickson|7 years ago

Not so much in the book itself, but definitely in the "Director's Cut" notes on the book web site. I cover bloom filters and the like in my more advanced algorithms courses.

Teaching that material correctly (without the traditional magical thinking) requires serious comfort with probability, which unfortunately isn't early enough in the CS curriculum at Illinois to be used in our data structures and algorithms courses.