Introduction to Algorithms: A Creative Approach Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is much more than a catalog of algorithms (e.g., CLR): its purpose is to train your intuition to recognize mathematical structure in abstract problems. What does it matter if you know Dijkstra's algorithm? It's much more valuable to have good intuitions and a inductive reasoning tool chest with which to smash apart all of the variations of the shortest path problem (for example.)
The reviewers who wrote that the book "assumes you are a math wiz" and that it provides "little or no guidance for solving an arbitrary problem of the same type" didn't get it. This book is trying very hard to make you into a wiz by forcing you to really interact with mathematics, rather than working through a set of nearly identical problems (--what passes for "education" in North America.)
I was just going to leave my review at that, but since the reviews that people find "helpful" are so way off base, I think I should throw in a relevant story.
When my friend was in grade 11, he showed up to the Canadian Computing Competition finals, placing 14th. The guy who won told him, "if you want to win, read this book." Two years later, he won the CCC against 2000 other students. This book is the best introduction you can give a budding mathematician.
Sure, you can cough up what you've memorized from CLR during your university algorithms course. But, do you want to learn to invent algorithms yourself?
Math is not something handed down generations in big, dry textbooks. Like all knowledge, math is organically discovered Truth, and you have learn to discover it for yourself.

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This book emphasizes the creative aspects of algorithm design by examining steps used in the process of algorithms development. The heart of this creative process lies in an analogy between proving mathematical theorems by induction and designing combinatorial algorithms. The book contains hundreds of problems and examples. It is designed to enhance the reader's problem-solving abilities and understanding of the principles behind algorithm design.

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