Algorithm Design Practice for Collegiate Programming Contests and Education


Book Description

This book can be used as an experiment and reference book for algorithm design courses, as well as a training manual for programming contests. It contains 247 problems selected from ACM-ICPC programming contests and other programming contests. There's detailed analysis for each problem. All problems, and test datum for most of problems will be provided online. The content will follow usual algorithms syllabus, and problem-solving strategies will be introduced in analyses and solutions to problem cases. For students in computer-related majors, contestants and programmers, this book can polish their programming and problem-solving skills with familarity of algorithms and mathematics.




Algorithm Design Practice for Collegiate Programming Contests and Education


Book Description

This book can be used as an experiment and reference book for algorithm design courses, as well as a training manual for programming contests. It contains 247 problems selected from ACM-ICPC programming contests and other programming contests. There's detailed analysis for each problem. All problems, and test datum for most of problems will be provided online. The content will follow usual algorithms syllabus, and problem-solving strategies will be introduced in analyses and solutions to problem cases. For students in computer-related majors, contestants and programmers, this book can polish their programming and problem-solving skills with familarity of algorithms and mathematics.




Data Structure Practice


Book Description

Combining knowledge with strategies, Data Structure Practice for Collegiate Programming Contests and Education presents the first comprehensive book on data structure in programming contests. This book is designed for training collegiate programming contest teams in the nuances of data structure and for helping college students in computer-related




Programming Challenges


Book Description

There are many distinct pleasures associated with computer programming. Craftsmanship has its quiet rewards, the satisfaction that comes from building a useful object and making it work. Excitement arrives with the flash of insight that cracks a previously intractable problem. The spiritual quest for elegance can turn the hacker into an artist. There are pleasures in parsimony, in squeezing the last drop of performance out of clever algorithms and tight coding. The games, puzzles, and challenges of problems from international programming competitions are a great way to experience these pleasures while improving your algorithmic and coding skills. This book contains over 100 problems that have appeared in previous programming contests, along with discussions of the theory and ideas necessary to attack them. Instant online grading for all of these problems is available from two WWW robot judging sites. Combining this book with a judge gives an exciting new way to challenge and improve your programming skills. This book can be used for self-study, for teaching innovative courses in algorithms and programming, and in training for international competition. The problems in this book have been selected from over 1,000 programming problems at the Universidad de Valladolid online judge. The judge has ruled on well over one million submissions from 27,000 registered users around the world to date. We have taken only the best of the best, the most fun, exciting, and interesting problems available.




Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets


Book Description

Massive modern datasets make traditional data structures and algorithms grind to a halt. This fun and practical guide introduces cutting-edge techniques that can reliably handle even the largest distributed datasets. In Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets you will learn: Probabilistic sketching data structures for practical problems Choosing the right database engine for your application Evaluating and designing efficient on-disk data structures and algorithms Understanding the algorithmic trade-offs involved in massive-scale systems Deriving basic statistics from streaming data Correctly sampling streaming data Computing percentiles with limited space resources Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets reveals a toolbox of new methods that are perfect for handling modern big data applications. You’ll explore the novel data structures and algorithms that underpin Google, Facebook, and other enterprise applications that work with truly massive amounts of data. These effective techniques can be applied to any discipline, from finance to text analysis. Graphics, illustrations, and hands-on industry examples make complex ideas practical to implement in your projects—and there’s no mathematical proofs to puzzle over. Work through this one-of-a-kind guide, and you’ll find the sweet spot of saving space without sacrificing your data’s accuracy. About the technology Standard algorithms and data structures may become slow—or fail altogether—when applied to large distributed datasets. Choosing algorithms designed for big data saves time, increases accuracy, and reduces processing cost. This unique book distills cutting-edge research papers into practical techniques for sketching, streaming, and organizing massive datasets on-disk and in the cloud. About the book Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets introduces processing and analytics techniques for large distributed data. Packed with industry stories and entertaining illustrations, this friendly guide makes even complex concepts easy to understand. You’ll explore real-world examples as you learn to map powerful algorithms like Bloom filters, Count-min sketch, HyperLogLog, and LSM-trees to your own use cases. What's inside Probabilistic sketching data structures Choosing the right database engine Designing efficient on-disk data structures and algorithms Algorithmic tradeoffs in massive-scale systems Computing percentiles with limited space resources About the reader Examples in Python, R, and pseudocode. About the author Dzejla Medjedovic earned her PhD in the Applied Algorithms Lab at Stony Brook University, New York. Emin Tahirovic earned his PhD in biostatistics from University of Pennsylvania. Illustrator Ines Dedovic earned her PhD at the Institute for Imaging and Computer Vision at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Table of Contents 1 Introduction PART 1 HASH-BASED SKETCHES 2 Review of hash tables and modern hashing 3 Approximate membership: Bloom and quotient filters 4 Frequency estimation and count-min sketch 5 Cardinality estimation and HyperLogLog PART 2 REAL-TIME ANALYTICS 6 Streaming data: Bringing everything together 7 Sampling from data streams 8 Approximate quantiles on data streams PART 3 DATA STRUCTURES FOR DATABASES AND EXTERNAL MEMORY ALGORITHMS 9 Introducing the external memory model 10 Data structures for databases: B-trees, Bε-trees, and LSM-trees 11 External memory sorting




Guide to Competitive Programming


Book Description

This invaluable textbook presents a comprehensive introduction to modern competitive programming. The text highlights how competitive programming has proven to be an excellent way to learn algorithms, by encouraging the design of algorithms that actually work, stimulating the improvement of programming and debugging skills, and reinforcing the type of thinking required to solve problems in a competitive setting. The book contains many “folklore” algorithm design tricks that are known by experienced competitive programmers, yet which have previously only been formally discussed in online forums and blog posts. Topics and features: reviews the features of the C++ programming language, and describes how to create efficient algorithms that can quickly process large data sets; discusses sorting algorithms and binary search, and examines a selection of data structures of the C++ standard library; introduces the algorithm design technique of dynamic programming, and investigates elementary graph algorithms; covers such advanced algorithm design topics as bit-parallelism and amortized analysis, and presents a focus on efficiently processing array range queries; surveys specialized algorithms for trees, and discusses the mathematical topics that are relevant in competitive programming; examines advanced graph techniques, geometric algorithms, and string techniques; describes a selection of more advanced topics, including square root algorithms and dynamic programming optimization. This easy-to-follow guide is an ideal reference for all students wishing to learn algorithms, and practice for programming contests. Knowledge of the basics of programming is assumed, but previous background in algorithm design or programming contests is not necessary. Due to the broad range of topics covered at various levels of difficulty, this book is suitable for both beginners and more experienced readers.




Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design


Book Description

Richard Bird takes a radical approach to algorithm design, namely, design by calculation. These 30 short chapters each deal with a particular programming problem drawn from sources as diverse as games and puzzles, intriguing combinatorial tasks, and more familiar areas such as data compression and string matching. Each pearl starts with the statement of the problem expressed using the functional programming language Haskell, a powerful yet succinct language for capturing algorithmic ideas clearly and simply. The novel aspect of the book is that each solution is calculated from an initial formulation of the problem in Haskell by appealing to the laws of functional programming. Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design will appeal to the aspiring functional programmer, students and teachers interested in the principles of algorithm design, and anyone seeking to master the techniques of reasoning about programs in an equational style.




The Data Science Design Manual


Book Description

This engaging and clearly written textbook/reference provides a must-have introduction to the rapidly emerging interdisciplinary field of data science. It focuses on the principles fundamental to becoming a good data scientist and the key skills needed to build systems for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. The Data Science Design Manual is a source of practical insights that highlights what really matters in analyzing data, and provides an intuitive understanding of how these core concepts can be used. The book does not emphasize any particular programming language or suite of data-analysis tools, focusing instead on high-level discussion of important design principles. This easy-to-read text ideally serves the needs of undergraduate and early graduate students embarking on an “Introduction to Data Science” course. It reveals how this discipline sits at the intersection of statistics, computer science, and machine learning, with a distinct heft and character of its own. Practitioners in these and related fields will find this book perfect for self-study as well. Additional learning tools: Contains “War Stories,” offering perspectives on how data science applies in the real world Includes “Homework Problems,” providing a wide range of exercises and projects for self-study Provides a complete set of lecture slides and online video lectures at www.data-manual.com Provides “Take-Home Lessons,” emphasizing the big-picture concepts to learn from each chapter Recommends exciting “Kaggle Challenges” from the online platform Kaggle Highlights “False Starts,” revealing the subtle reasons why certain approaches fail Offers examples taken from the data science television show “The Quant Shop” (www.quant-shop.com)




Competitive Programming in Python


Book Description

Want to kill it at your job interview in the tech industry? Want to win that coding competition? Learn all the algorithmic techniques and programming skills you need from two experienced coaches, problem setters, and jurors for coding competitions. The authors highlight the versatility of each algorithm by considering a variety of problems and show how to implement algorithms in simple and efficient code. Readers can expect to master 128 algorithms in Python and discover the right way to tackle a problem and quickly implement a solution of low complexity. Classic problems like Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm and Knuth-Morris-Pratt's string matching algorithm are featured alongside lesser known data structures like Fenwick trees and Knuth's dancing links. The book provides a framework to tackle algorithmic problem solving, including: Definition, Complexity, Applications, Algorithm, Key Information, Implementation, Variants, In Practice, and Problems. Python code included in the book and on the companion website.




Algorithms Unlocked


Book Description

For anyone who has ever wondered how computers solve problems, an engagingly written guide for nonexperts to the basics of computer algorithms. Have you ever wondered how your GPS can find the fastest way to your destination, selecting one route from seemingly countless possibilities in mere seconds? How your credit card account number is protected when you make a purchase over the Internet? The answer is algorithms. And how do these mathematical formulations translate themselves into your GPS, your laptop, or your smart phone? This book offers an engagingly written guide to the basics of computer algorithms. In Algorithms Unlocked, Thomas Cormen—coauthor of the leading college textbook on the subject—provides a general explanation, with limited mathematics, of how algorithms enable computers to solve problems. Readers will learn what computer algorithms are, how to describe them, and how to evaluate them. They will discover simple ways to search for information in a computer; methods for rearranging information in a computer into a prescribed order (“sorting”); how to solve basic problems that can be modeled in a computer with a mathematical structure called a “graph” (useful for modeling road networks, dependencies among tasks, and financial relationships); how to solve problems that ask questions about strings of characters such as DNA structures; the basic principles behind cryptography; fundamentals of data compression; and even that there are some problems that no one has figured out how to solve on a computer in a reasonable amount of time.