Read thru all of the pages in this PDF - Here are a few quick observations & requests.
(1)Could you reword this ? "You could start at the start" - to something like "You start at the beginning of the Phone book" Or "you could start searching from the beginning of the book". This sounds really conversational , in fact a lot of the text sounds conversational , I suppose you wanted it to be that way !
(2)What is figure 1.2 for ? Is it to accompany the text that says "Now suppose you log on to facebook" ? The picture here doesn't seem to serve any purpose. I guess it could go to the side of the page when eventually typeset. When I see a picture in between paragraphs , I automatically think of it as an explanatory picture and not something that has been added for 'fun factor'
(3) And figure 1.3 is not doing a good job at explaining itself too :( Is that hour-glass shape 'the algorithm' in itself ?
(4) The number guessing game and all of the associated illustrations are nice.
(5) "1.2.1 Algorithm speed is not measured in seconds" is really cool. I had a lot of troubles understanding why asymptotic analysis was necessary when I was first introduced to it. This sort of explains clearly that "seconds" is not the metric for analyzing the speed of algorithms. upvoting this part of the book :)
2. The formatting is misleading here. The final book will have very different formatting. There are a lot of "fun" images in the book, but it is confusing that they still have a label like "figure 1.2". They serve no purpose except to provide a mental break.
Hi HN! I'm posting this today because the book is half off today. The target market is bootcamp students and undergrads looking for an easier introduction to algorithms. I've seen a positive reaction to it so far!
The half off code is dotd081814au at www.manning.com/bhargava.
(1)Could you reword this ? "You could start at the start" - to something like "You start at the beginning of the Phone book" Or "you could start searching from the beginning of the book". This sounds really conversational , in fact a lot of the text sounds conversational , I suppose you wanted it to be that way !
(2)What is figure 1.2 for ? Is it to accompany the text that says "Now suppose you log on to facebook" ? The picture here doesn't seem to serve any purpose. I guess it could go to the side of the page when eventually typeset. When I see a picture in between paragraphs , I automatically think of it as an explanatory picture and not something that has been added for 'fun factor'
(3) And figure 1.3 is not doing a good job at explaining itself too :( Is that hour-glass shape 'the algorithm' in itself ?
(4) The number guessing game and all of the associated illustrations are nice.
(5) "1.2.1 Algorithm speed is not measured in seconds" is really cool. I had a lot of troubles understanding why asymptotic analysis was necessary when I was first introduced to it. This sort of explains clearly that "seconds" is not the metric for analyzing the speed of algorithms. upvoting this part of the book :)
Good luck !