Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy

Peeling Data Structures and Algorithms:

“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:

1. Introduction
2. Recursion and Backtracking
3. Linked Lists
4. Stacks
5. Queues
6. Trees
7. Priority Queue and Heaps
8. Disjoint Sets ADT
9. Graph Algorithms
10. Sorting   
11. Searching   
12. Selection Algorithms [Medians]   
13. Symbol Tables   
14. Hashing   
15. String Algorithms   
16. Algorithms Design Techniques   
17. Greedy Algorithms   
18. Divide and Conquer Algorithms   
19. Dynamic Programming   
20. Complexity Classes   
21. Miscellaneous Concepts  

Review

I 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, Hsin Mu Tsai

There is no fluff in this book, and it makes good use of all the trees that went into the making and printing of the pages of this book. If you want to practice solving interview type programming problems, that’s what you will get here. No wasted pages.  –Ty Sid, Amazon Reviewer

About the Author

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 languages: 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
• IT Interview Questions
• Data Structures and Algorithms for GATE
• Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy in Java
• Coding Interview Questions
• Peeling Design Patterns
• Elements of Computer Networking
• Data Structures and Algorithmic Thinking with Python