algorithms

I have used this book in my data structures class. It has some good points. It covers each and every data structure in depth and discusses multiple implementations of each of them. It also makes liberal use of diagrams showing what the data structure is supposed to be doing in memory at that time. The problem with it is that it deals with everything very theoretically, often times letting the user puzzle out the implementations themselves. It is overly wordy, the explanations could be cut in half and made much more to the point without loosing anything. I don't know about anyone else but I like to be taught how to do something and then play with it for understanding. I don't like to have the entire theory of what is supposed to happen explained to me in the abstract and then being left to get it or not. Although there are people who learn best this way. If you are one of them then by all means pick up this book. My over all feeling is that it makes you work overly hard to acquire the knowledge that it presents.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Preparing for the Journey

Chapter 2 - Linked Data Representations

Chapter 3 - Introduction to Recursion

Chapter 4 - Modularity and Data Abstraction

Chapter 5 - Introduction to Software Engineering Concepts

Chapter 6 - Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms

Chapter 7 - Linear Data Structures - Stacks and Queues

Chapter 8 - Lists, Strings, and Dynamic Memory Allocation

Chapter 9 - Trees

Chapter 10 - Graphs

Chapter 11 - Hashing and the Table ADT

Chapter 12 - External Collections of Data

Chapter 13 - Sorting

Chapter 14 - Advanced Recursion

Chapter 15 - Object-Oriented Programming

Chapter 16 - Advanced Software Engineering

Appendix - Math Reference and Tutorial

Covers all the topics, but in an academic and wordy fashion. not worth the money. he simply does not explain thing that well.

This book is very poorly organised. The previous reviewer said that Standish emphasized data abstraction and modularity. This is true, but his approach is the typical "give examples and hope the reader learns from just the examples". A better approach would be to say it first before giving the example. Unfortunately Standish does not do this. If you're like me and don't like learning simply from examples, then don't get this book.