> Chapter 0 uses induction, and whenever Chapter n−1 uses induction, so does Chapter n
I love this.
Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
61–70 of 245 posts
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
"pretend you don't have solutions" is not a realistic approach. The strength of people's conviction to this will probably fall on a bell curve and few can resist the temptation when the problems get really tough. Accounting for how humans are, I do not see how one can easily say "Having solutions is strictly better". I can easily think of cases where it is indeed better to have solutions but to say "strictly" require…
Don’t rob the self-learner that doesn’t have access to TAs, fellow students, and professors the ability to check their work, just because someone else doesn’t have the discipline to not abuse it. Textbook solutions are good for those that aren’t in school, aren’t in formal programs and have no other way of receiving feedback. The “you should know if you’re right” mentality doesn’t necessarily fit a person that’s been…
I had a girlfriend who was doing her PhD in Physics. I remember one night she and her classmates spent all night working on a problem, that was essentially unsolvable. The next day they go to class and all of them made their best attempt, but no one could complete it. The problem? The professor accidentally used the wrong metric on one of the numbers meaning that they couldn't do the steps to what should have been an easy solution. Now they noticed this, they are a smart group of people, but that's not what the problem was, so they spent hours and hours trying to solve what he gave them without any hope of actually doing it.
In the end, he was like "Oh my bad," and corrected his mistake. The point of the story is that they were able to essentially ask him for the solution and they were able to check what they'd done, and in the end he made the mistake. In situations like this, he should provide the answer if nothing else to show that he didn't make a mistake in the problem set. People are fallible, no matter how brilliant you are.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#63> ́ Black spades indicate problems that require a significant amount of gruntwork and/or coding. These are rare. > ∆ Orange stars indicate that you are eating Lucky Charms that were manufactured before 1998. Ew. (p. vi) :) Really like the book already. The preface falls under the category of advice on learning to learn. Thanks for all your work. #stealthisbook
>Caveat Lector!
>Of course, none of those people should be blamed for any >flaws in the resulting
>book. Despite many rounds of revision and editing, this >book contains many mistakes, bugs, gaffes, omissions, >snafus, kludges, typos, mathos, grammaros,
>thinkos, brain farts, poor design decisions, historical >inaccuracies, anachronisms,
>inconsistencies, exaggerations, dithering, blather, >distortions, oversimplification,
>nonsense, garbage, cruft, junk, and outright lies, all >of which are entirely Steve Skiena’s fault.
Coming from a class where we used a decidedly poor textbook for algorithms, this looks like a joy to read.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#64I took Jeff's Algorithms class in college and he's one of the best professors I've had. I still struggled through the class but definitely made it through with a great experience.
Saw his name at the top of HN and immediately came to post the same thing. He taught me how to think and problem solve in a whole new way. Was the most memorable class and instructor for me.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#65I took Jeff's Algorithms class in college and he's one of the best professors I've had. I still struggled through the class but definitely made it through with a great experience.
I took CS 173 and 373 from Jeff nearly 20 years ago, with 273 from another great professor. That course sequence along with Combinatorial Game Theory (which I took on a lark) has had a greater impact on me than the rest of my university experience combined. A lot of that is due to the quality of the professors I was lucky enough to have.
CS 598 JGE with jeffe which covered more advanced and niche algorithms was 10000% the most impactful cs class I've ever taken.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#66Jeff Erickson was my algorithms professor in 2012. He exemplifies the articulate, passionate educator that I wish I had for my other CS subjects. I recognize many of these notes having read them many times in preparation for quite difficult exams - a fun anecdote shared among people who've taken the class is the 25% credit given on any exam question just for writing "I don't know", effectively a reward for acknowledging your own shortcoming and for saving the TA the time to decipher a bullshit answer.
Professor Erickson, if you're reading this, thank you for being the best educator of my college days and for making your beautifully-written notes available to everyone.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you prefer not to have solutions, pretend you don't have solutions. Having solutions is strictly better (for the reader. I'm ignoring the cost of producing them to begin with)
"pretend you don't have solutions" is not a realistic approach. The strength of people's conviction to this will probably fall on a bell curve and few can resist the temptation when the problems get really tough. Accounting for how humans are, I do not see how one can easily say "Having solutions is strictly better". I can easily think of cases where it is indeed better to have solutions but to say "strictly" require…
Well. It has worked really well for me and obviously a bunch of other engineers as a number of our books had solutions at the end of each chapter.
As long as cheats are only available for ungraded homework/self assessement tests cheaters are only going to cheat themselves.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t rob the self-learner that doesn’t have access to TAs, fellow students, and professors the ability to check their work, just because someone else doesn’t have the discipline to not abuse it. Textbook solutions are good for those that aren’t in school, aren’t in formal programs and have no other way of receiving feedback. The “you should know if you’re right” mentality doesn’t necessarily fit a person that’s been…
I had a girlfriend who was doing her PhD in Physics. I remember one night she and her classmates spent all night working on a problem, that was essentially unsolvable. The next day they go to class and all of them made their best attempt, but no one could complete it. The problem? The professor accidentally used the wrong metric on one of the numbers meaning that they couldn't do the steps to what should have been an…
That professor probably had produced the answer already, using the metric he had initially intended. Having a set of answers doesn't mean you didn't make a mistake in the questions.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#69Jeff Erickson was my algorithms professor in 2012. He exemplifies the articulate, passionate educator that I wish I had for my other CS subjects. I recognize many of these notes having read them many times in preparation for quite difficult exams - a fun anecdote shared among people who've taken the class is the 25% credit given on any exam question just for writing "I don't know", effectively a reward for acknowledg…
>25% credit given on any exam question just for writing "I don't know", effectively a reward for acknowledging your own shortcoming and for saving the TA the time to decipher a bullshit answer.
That’s brilliant, yet I’ve never heard of it. Should be standard scoring for written exams.
Re: Algorithms, by Jeff Erickson
#70Are algorithms useful to learn for a non-programmer? Is there a benefit to thinking through what is presented in a book like this over solving general problems in a day-to-day context?