Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structure and Algorithmic Puzzles
Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structure and Algorithmic Puzzles book cover

Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structure and Algorithmic Puzzles

2nd Edition

Price
$16.21
Format
Paperback
Pages
448
Publisher
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1468108866
Dimensions
8.5 x 1.01 x 11 inches
Weight
2.28 pounds

Description

Reviews : goo.gl/uxjzrrI use this book for teaching "data structure and algorithm" course for freshman undergraduate students in a university. The following review is based on my experience of using the book as a textbook for the course.After teaching the course for one semester, I started to look for a textbook that could better suit my need than a conventional data structure textbook, with the following requirements:(1) There should be lots of code examples for the students to read and learn how to implement basic data structures.(2) The text in the book should be short and precise. As English is not our primary language, students are sometimes afraid of reading very long and detailed text in a textbook, and in that case they just avoid reading the textbook at all.(3) The code examples should be in C, as they have not yet learned other programming languages such as java or C++.After looking through a couple of similar books on amazon.com as well as in local computer bookstores, this book is the one that I selected for my course in the following years and it satisfies all these requirements. A few things that I like about this book:(1) Lots of figures in the book, showing how the data structure is modified and updated in a step-by-step manner. This is extremely important to a beginner - learn by examples. Visualization of a data structure is always easier to understand than the text.(2) The problem section after each chapter listed lots of relevant questions **with solutions (code included)**. Though that means I cannot just pick the problems in the textbook as homework assignments to the students, I do believe that this would enable the students to think more about how they would utilize the data structure they just learned, and see if their thoughts match with the solution.(3) Many problems in the problem section in each chapter take an approach that it develops the solution from the most naïve one, then a few intermediate ones, then finally the best available solution. This is one of the features that I like the most about this book. Students can gain a lot by going through this process.Overall, I would highly recommend this book to students who just started to learn about data structure and algorithm or programming in general. This book is a good supplement to a conventional data structure textbook, as it offers many good code examples and selections of relevant problems **with solutions**. There is no deep analysis or detailed proof in this book, which is not what this book is for (for example, as a textbook to teach algorithm and complexity analysis), and what you would be able to find in a conventional data structure textbook. The book could also be good for a professional who just want a quick review of important data structure concepts and implementations. -Prof,xa0Hsin Mu Tsai Objective of this book is to present the ideas for solving data-structure and algorithmic problems. I request to go through the first chapter as it describes when do we (situations) get different complexities like O(logn), O(n^2), O(loglogn), O(nlogn), O(2^n) etc..Once you understand them, remaining chapters looks easy as we refer these complexities at every place. Narasimha Karumanchi is the founder of CareerMonk Publications and author of few books on data structures, algorithms, and design patterns. He was a software developer who has been both interviewer and interviewee over his long career. Most recently he worked for Amazon Corporation, IBM Software Labs, Mentor Graphics, and Microsoft. Narasimha holds an M.Tech. in computer science from IIT, Bombay, and B.Tech. from JNT university. He authored the following books which got translated to international: Chinese, Japanese, Korea and Taiwan. Also, around 58 international universities were using these books as reference for academic courses. Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy IT Interview Questions IT Interview Questions Data Structures and Algorithms for GATE Data Structures and Algorithms for GATE Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy in Java Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy in Java Coding Interview Questions Coding Interview Questions Peeling Design Patterns Peeling Design Patterns Elements of Computer Networking Elements of Computer Networking Data Structures and Algorithmic Thinking with Python Data Structures and Algorithmic Thinking with Python Algorithm Design Techniques Algorithm Design Techniques Read more

Features & Highlights

  • "Data Structures And Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structures and Algorithmic Puzzles"
  • is a book that offers solutions to complex data structures and algorithms. There are multiple solutions for each problem and the book is coded in C/C++, it comes handy as an interview and exam guide for computer scientists. It can be used as a reference manual by those readers in the computer science industry. This book serves as guide to prepare for interviews, exams, and campus work. In short, this book offers solutions to various complex data structures and algorithmic problems.
  • Topics Covered:
  • Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Recursion and Backtracking
  • Recursion and Backtracking
  • Linked Lists
  • Linked Lists
  • Stacks
  • Stacks
  • Queues
  • Queues
  • Trees
  • Trees
  • Priority Queue and Heaps
  • Priority Queue and Heaps
  • Disjoint Sets ADT
  • Disjoint Sets ADT
  • Graph Algorithms
  • Graph Algorithms
  • Sorting
  • Sorting
  • Searching
  • Searching
  • Selection Algorithms [Medians]
  • Selection Algorithms [Medians]
  • Symbol Tables
  • Symbol Tables
  • Hashing
  • Hashing
  • String Algorithms
  • String Algorithms
  • Algorithms Design Techniques
  • Algorithms Design Techniques
  • Greedy Algorithms
  • Greedy Algorithms
  • Divide and Conquer Algorithms
  • Divide and Conquer Algorithms
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Complexity Classes
  • Complexity Classes
  • Miscellaneous Concepts
  • Miscellaneous Concepts

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(877)
★★★★
25%
(731)
★★★
15%
(439)
★★
7%
(205)
23%
(672)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Thoroughly Awesome and Useful

I'm a professional coder, and I bought this book on a curious whim. This book is great for two reasons:

1.)The cover design is laughably bad. From the questionable "Best Seller" badge to the cheesy vector art, it's so bad that after you see just how useful and thorough the actual content of the book is, the contrast between the content and the cover makes you laugh all over again.

2.)On to what matters: the content. Holy cow (no religious insensitivity intended). This book is where it's at. It's the single best reference for computer science concepts that I own. It's a 6-year computer-science university education condensed into 425 rich pages. Everything--and I mean everything--is here, and the concepts are presented in a language style that's precise and very easy to understand. The book lives up to its name, and it's well worth it for any programmer to buy this. I give it an enthusiastic five stars.
77 people found this helpful
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Not made easy.

What a ridiculous book. The book (and any revenue resulting from the sale of it) are the only things that were easy in the making. I saw the bad reviews, but they seemed to focus on the Indianisms; an argument which I feel is, if not jingoistic/zenophobic/racist and stupid, not a good one for a book being bad (sufficient but not necessary). But this book is absolutely terrible. If the people who gave this book more than two stars are not family members or friends/supporters of the author, then they already know this stuff and think it's a nice way to sum it up -- I'm sure it's easy if you've already got the knowledge. Do yourself, your bank account, your wallet, your kids, your girlfriend, a homeless man a favor and do something else with your money. Maybe buy two well-established books: one on data structures and one on algorithms (probably a good idea to buy a book on discrete math as well). Algorithms and data structures maybe CAN'T be made easy, but this book doesn't even approach doing so.

*********EDIT************

I said above that the reviews that had more than two stars were probably friends. Now I've actually looked through some of them and they definitely are -- or by the author setting up many accounts on Amazon under different names. The Mary Thomas review is absolutely shameful and I ask anyone thinking of buying this book to inspect it -- it is most obviously written by the author, parroting the exact advise he gives in all the negative reviews here. All the five star reviews are by users with a single review -- this book (except one which also reviewed a galaxy phone). This is as of the date of this post -- the author will likely go through and change this some. What a disgusting business model you have; I respected you when I saw you answering the negative posts, now I think your business practice borders on fraud.
24 people found this helpful
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Needs proper editing

I started looking through this on the hunt for an introductory text and put it down. The number of books coming out purportedly in English from Indian writers in India concerns me. The language does not parse; the grammar is ambiguous. Missing subjects and lack of basic subject-verb agreement are just the beginning. As a beginning student, it is not worth it to try to slog through a text where even basic meaning and the author's points are not clear. You'd think that by the time they get to a second edition they would bother to get it reviewed and edited properly by a native English speaker.

How are people giving this five starts? I'd hypothesize that they're not native English speakers or they have more familiarity with the subject matter.
24 people found this helpful
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Bad English, not enough detail

I'm a self-taught programmer who is trying to get a better CS foundation. I bought this book based on the great reviews and I regret it.

The book abounds with bad English. Example: "That means we represent the algorithm with multiple expressions: one for case where it is taking the less time and other for case where it is taking the more time." This bad writing was very distracting and made me doubt whether I understood the concepts accurately.
23 people found this helpful
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One of the best, most well-written data structure and algorithms primers I've ever read

I got this book (among others) to brush up on some CS fundamentals because I haven't been writing a lot of really complex code lately. Narasimha does a bang up job of presenting hard concepts really really well. Everything is explained in lay language and is easy to digest unlike so many other algorithms and data structures books.

The other great thing is that the code is all well written and there is very little to no obfuscation or contraction. Too many technical books have either horribly written code or code that favors smallness over readability (I'm looking at you Robert Sedgewick!). Narasimha's code is well written and does not sacrifice readability for space. That is my ABSOLUTE favorite feature of this book.

If I could ask for one more thing, I'd ask for some of the text in the book to become comments in the code. Especially for the larger implementations it is easy to lose track of the concepts as you read the code. Comments interleaved with the code provide a great way to reinforce the concepts. I also realize that the programmer community is somewhat divided over the value of comments but I think we can make an exception for textbook code :)
20 people found this helpful
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BAD book on "Algorithms & Data Structures"; stay away from this trash...

This book lures its customers to buy it by claiming its intended audience as "Big Job Hunters", "Students" (Really?), "Instructors" (Kidding??), "Reference Manual" (Seriously???), ... (of course, much of the customers would fall into any of these categories). But, unfortunately, this book presents its title subject abysmally and gulls all its audience.

Here is an example of some (sorry, full) nonsense from this book (page 11, available freely as "LOOK INSIDE!" feature of this book):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.10 What is Rate of Growth?

The rate at which the running time increases as a function of input is called rate of growth. Let us assume that you went to a shop to buy a car and a cycle. If your friend sees you there and asks what you are buying then in general you say buying a car. This is because, cost of car is too big compared to cost of cycle (approximating the cost of cycle to cost of car).

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The above "gem" leaves many questions unanswered:

What "Rate of Growth" does the section heading refers to?
Why "Rate of Growth" is just limited to only "running time" (and of what?)?
Since when the shops (or showrooms to be more appropriate) that sell cars are selling cycles too (by the way, sorry for the plight of car business implied here)?
Why on earth would I shy away and hide the fact from my friend that I am not there to buy cycle as well (hey, I am all in for "Go Green Initiative")?
How can we approximate the cost of cycle to cost of car? What does this approximation exactly means?

Like the aforementioned "gem", this book is full of bad explanations and buggy code. It's a shame that the author is trying to impart his misunderstanding and misinformation on Data Structures & Algorithms through this book, presumably to make some quick buck. Do yourself a favor, don't buy this and flush your money down the toilet...
18 people found this helpful
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Good breadth, but lots of errors

This book is a good review of data structures and algorithms. It covers a lot of stuff and is a pretty quick read if you need to touch up on stuff quickly (like before an interview). It provides a good curriculum for self-study.

But... there are a lot of errors. Things like mislabeled nodes in graph and tree diagrams that make it hard to follow examples, errors in code, and typos in general. On top of the errors some of the explanations are confusing. I found myself going to wikipedia to look up less confusing descriptions and clearer code for algorithms. As another reviewer mentioned, an index would be very handy as well.

Overall, I'd probably look for another book. I think with some editing and 3rd party review this book could be very good, but as it is right now I don't think it is worth the money.
16 people found this helpful
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Helped me get the job that I wanted.

This book is clear and cover all topics that you need for an Interview.
If you solve all the problems in the book you will be ready for the interview no doubt.
Also this can be used as a reference in your day to day job.
16 people found this helpful
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Book is riddled with errors

This book claims to be a Best Seller, however it is self-published and riddled with grammatical errors and has not been written to effectively teach a beginning computer science student data structures due to errors and being heavily dense in theory without walk through practice problems. The book has not made data structures easy in Java, very misleading and unappreciated. Since this book is self-published, you don't know if the information is correct, so for a student who's learning data structures and algorithms, I cannot be certain whether I'm learning the material correctly. I will never buy anything from this author again, and I am demanding my money back.
13 people found this helpful
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Error on back cover listing the number of copies sold!

I dont know how this book is so highly rated. The back cover has an error in the number of copies shown! This is not encouraging as a technical math book for computer science. Anybody know how much 1,18,000 is? Also on the 18th page the author gives a terrible Big-O notation explenation using about 7 sentences in total.. That kind of effort does not make complex mathematical analysis of algorithms "easy" as the title would have you believe. There are also numerous gramattical errors in just the first 20 pages. The Author should have also listed the required mathematical prerequisite understanding, but there is none. I had high hopes for this book as a good beginner into to algorithms with practice problems... Back to the drawing board.

UPDATE 02/13/2019
The author searched me on linkedin.com and viewed my profile!!! Not sure his motivation, maybe he wanted to retaliate against me or ask me to take down the negative review. Its definitely creepy. Ive never seen that behavior from an author before.
10 people found this helpful