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MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

ocw.mit.edu

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#41
post #28
post #14

This is great! I just picked up the famous algorithms textbook (CLRS) and have been reading through (I'm just past the introduction and am moving in to chapters 1 - 3 (basing my schedule on the readings in this course) I figure if I follow along in the videos it'll be a great compliment with the two of them enhancing each other. Now if only I could find the "algorithms certificate" to go with it, maybe I could use th…

Not sure.. CLRS is too dense for page-to-page reading. The more I was advancing through the book the more I was forgetting from the previous chapters... :)

It's a bit dense, but I found the first few chapters to be the worst. Once you get past the dull beginning, the rest is really interesting. I think it's a GREAT book! (We used it in all of my algorithms classes.)

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an FYI, Manning has a code the past two days for 50% off all books, and they will often have 35-50% off single books at anyone time. Their shipping is also expensive for a single item, but free for three. But yes, otherwise it's very expensive. $45 for a 200 page picture book on algorithms is a bit steep.

Correct, Manning frequently does "deal of the day". I will tweet the next time it happens for my book (@_egonschiele). I don't set the prices (obviously). The book is also available through Safari books online, and US-based folks can request it at their library also.

Got it on safari. Loving the book so far.

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#43
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really? I have access to Safari. Thanks. Still though, I think later this week I will buy a copy. I like your blog too, and after years of intro level courses of different types (currently watched my eyes water over when redoing insertion sort in Scala with Odersky in his Scala class in Coursera doing pattern matching and functional decomposition), perhaps all I really need is a picture book. Out of curiosity, as…

Thanks, that's very nice of you to say. I wrote the book because I didn't find an easy-to-read book on algorithms, and it took me a long time to learn. I think teaching hard concepts in a clear way is very important, so that's what I try to do with my book and blog.

Tell me about it. I think picture books for programming. Animated turtles all the way down!

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#46
post #44

Do you think these materials are enough to pass interviews at big tech companies?

These courses will provide you a good theoretical background, which may not be enough to crack the interview problems. You might wanna look at some of the programming problems on Hackerrank, Codejam etc to bridge the gap between the theory and the implementation.

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#47
post #15

Berkeley was making all of their lecture videos available to the public until they recently moved to EdX. Course videos from Spring 2015 and prior (going back as far as Spring 2010) can be accessed here: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/series.html#c,d,Computer_Science I have been working through the cs core classes (61a/b/c) by following the syllabus from the semester corresponding to the videos for reading and homework…

We didn't move them to EdX, we just made them private and available to Berkeley students only. I think this is because of some rulings stating that lecture videos have to be provided with CC if they are to be made public (OCW was sued for this).

These sort of rulings have their pros and cons... they prevent a chance for a crowd sourcing model of providing CC.

Re: MIT Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring 2015)

#48
post #22

Jeremy Scott from MIT, along with two other people, created a visual language for tracing and explaining data structures and algorithms. "A Direct Manipulation Language for Explaining Algorithms" ( https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mug/pubs/Scott2014DirectManipul... ) A bunch of teaching assistants used it during recitations for the course. It looks really cool and very helpful for developing intuition. Does anyone know i…

One of the authors of that paper, Philip Guo, created the invaluable Online Python Tutor.

http://pythontutor.com/

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