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Title: Programming Challenges by Steven S. Skiena, Miguel Revilla ISBN: 0-387-00163-8 Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: 28 March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Pearl of Programming Contest :)
Comment: Great Archimedes appears with his famous "Eureka" in the minds of contestants when they get their solutions accepted by the judge. But if you scan through the famous bookstore's catalog you won't find such sort of books reflecting programming contests rather you'll find many good and huge volumes of professional programming books! You may also find many really good books on mathematical competitions like "Math Olympiads". But they don't get the whole job done!
From the first chapter and appendices this book is trying to familiarize the online judge and contest system to the newcomers and old contestants will know about different language using statistics and problem's level.
Most of the book (80%) generally discusses on "Data Structures". There are of course many very good books on this particular important field, but this book focus on their implementation in contests rather than deep materials. And the good thing is, it gives reference on any specific part of data structures or algorithms for further study.
I think the mathematical problem oriented portion (graph theory, number theory and geometry) is brighter than the other topics. It's good as algorithmic problems of programming contests always carry some special cases that depend on mathematics. Besides, many contestants just miss the higher rankings just for comparatively weakness in mathematics.
A good algorithm book shouldn't depend on any particular programming language but this is not an algorithm book, it's a programming contest tutorial or manual, so, it also contains different tips of algorithmic performance with time and tricky language syntax usage to optimize the solution of any challenging contest problem. But this book seems to be C language oriented. It's true that it has given many good library references on C++ and packages of Java but you won't find any code belongs to these languages. May be both C++ and Java (it's much more than C++) contains many predefined methods to handle data structures. But I think, as there are many good books on data structure and algorithm then it should give more C++ and Java code and their usage in contests, where of course time matters.
And the other thing is, this book contains many problems which are taken from acm.uva.es site, besides it's a book which have a companion website then it can be easily avoided to give the problems (description and sample IO) in the book. The pages used just for the problems can be more utilized by giving many techniques on the contest and tricky language syntax or library usage of C++, Java and another avoided language PASCAL.
Rating: 4
Summary: Outstanding Work!!!
Comment: I completely agree with Mr. Shahriar Manzoor who has been selected the Judge of the World Finals 2003 & 2004 for his significant contribution in programming contest activities. He is also the System Administrator of ACM UVa Online Judge of Professor Miguel Revilla and a contributor in this book. You can find several contest problems in this book written by Mr. Shahriar Manzoor. Contestants in Bangladesh are getting profound interest in this book. Students were eagerly waiting for this book and the solution techniques provided are helping them greatly in solving many problems that they were not being able to solve. This is a great help!!
[N. B: Sumit (Mr. Shahriar Manzoor) once told me that if he had to choose a second profession, he would have selected cover-designing.]
-- Tanbir Ahmed
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Book for Newcomers
Comment: I have been arranging programming contests for a 2/3 years and was a not so successful contestant in my contestant days. The reason behind this was I think that I made some mistakes and there was no one to guide me through the tunnel of programming contests. There are class people in this world who does well in programming contest autometically but others need help. But if you are a new comer then it is quite obvious that you will feel helpless for significant amount of time. This book will help you to get out of that situation. It will introduce you to Valladolid online Judge system which is the now the only judge with more than 1000 programming contest problems.
Please remember one thing "The small mistakes that you make in your regular programming assignments are not seen by your teachers. Programming contest does not allow you to make those mistakes." This book will allow you to come out of those mistakes. Some useful routine are also prepared for you in this book. The reason for which I have given this book four stars are (not five)
a) I expect a lot in future from the writers of this book. So when they will produce next volume (I dearly hope that they will produce a second volume) how will I give that six stars? :)
b) The cover page is not convincing. I am not an art critic and I don't think many programming contestants are.
cheers
Shahriar Manzoor
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Title: The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena, Steve Skiena ISBN: 0387948600 Publisher: Telos Pr Pub. Date: 14 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $69.95 |
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Title: Dr. Ecco's Cyberpuzzles: 36 Puzzles for Hackers and Other Mathematical Detectives by Dennis Elliott Shasha ISBN: 039305120X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco by Dennis Shasha ISBN: 0486296156 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 08 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: 102 Combinatorial Problems by Titu Andreescu, Zuming Feng ISBN: 0817643176 Publisher: Birkhauser Boston Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers by William Poundstone ISBN: 0316919160 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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