5 ms·

Algorithms tutorial series for beginners

177 points by adriansky 8y ago

01100011 8y ago
Curious if anyone knows of a short overview of CS or Engineering topics(i.e. linear algebra, diff eqs, etc) for keeping refreshed as you age. I'm not talking about a full tutorial, more like something you could scan through every few years just to make sure you're not forgetting the important stuff that you haven't used since college. As a side note, I recently interviewed with a couple companies in the valley and the focus of the interviews was not on 'gotcha' algorithm questions. There were a few, but I came away feeling that the process was more fair and reasonable than I'd been led to believe. Now, granted, I'm an embedded software guy and maybe they tailored the questions for me, but I feel like I wasted a month going over graph algorithms. It was a good learning experience, but my time would have been better spent reviewing more basic embedded topics.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dominotw 8y ago
  I definitely got graph questions at google, facebook and two other smaller startups.
- earthicus 8y ago
  You might look at Laub [1] for a short, somewhat advanced overview of linear algebra with some differential equations, as it's applied to classical engineering and science. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898715768/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898715768/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
- gumby 8y ago
  Skimming the materials at Open Courseware is really good. Just reading the problem sets from the thermo course I took 30 years ago brought back lots of buried memories and forced me to learn some stuff I honestly hadn't at the time. It's not taking an online course -- it's all the material handed out with an offline course. https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
  - 1ark 8y ago
    It's a good strategy. Refreshing and bringing back the memories, and patching some knowledge holes.
- ultrasounder 8y ago
  "my time would have been better spent reviewing more basic embedded topics." In my own experience embedded topics have all been a derivative of my experience working on embedded systems( I Interviewed for a EE role). What kind of embedded questions were you asked ?
  - 01100011 8y ago
    Some things relating to board bringup(power-on to when the bios boots the OS, how DDR memory is initialized, etc). Basic algorithms(bit counting), atomics, virtual memory, malloc()/free() implementations, etc. Given system X and problem Y, what could cause problem Y. Not strictly embedded, but definitely not graph theory.
    - ultrasounder 8y ago
      Great!Thanks for sharing. And Good luck with interviews.
herodotus 8y ago
>A math genius called Alan Turing joined the British military to crack the German “Enigma” code. He knew they would never get ahead if they keep doing the calculations by pen and paper. So after many months of hard work, they built a machine. Unfortunately, It took more than a day to decode a message! So, it was useless :(((( I could not read past this. Yet another distortion of what was done at Bletchley Park. Yes, I understand, keep your readers interested, but not by making up stuff and claiming it was real. I think the author should find a better example of an import use of algorithms than this one.
- adriansky 8y ago
  What's your understanding about what happened at Bletchley Park?
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    The machine wasn't useless.
  - herodotus 8y ago
    To answer that would take an entire book! One book you might try is "Battle of Wits" by Stephen Budiansky, published in 2000 by The Free Press. ISBN: 0-684-85932-7 There was never a single break through at Bletchley. The Bombe machines (there were eventually many of them) were useful, but were just one part of the overall effort, and they did not always get results. The idea that all messages ended with "Heil Hitler!" is just wrong.
- billhathaway 8y ago
  The next sentences are: Alan’s team found out that every encrypted message ended with the same string: “Heil Hitler” Aha! After changing the algorithm, the machine was to decoded in minutes rather than days!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sigi45 8y ago
Liked your writeup on balancing trees :-) My biggest issue: The amount! You can do more algorithm and datastructres! Greedy, Divide and Conquer etc.

177 points by adriansky 8y ago

Curious if anyone knows of a short overview of CS or Engineering topics(i.e. linear algebra, diff eqs, etc) for keeping refreshed as you age. I'm not talking about a full tutorial, more like something you could scan through every few years just to make sure you're not forgetting the important stuff that you haven't used since college. As a side note, I recently interviewed with a couple companies in the valley and the focus of the interviews was not on 'gotcha' algorithm questions. There were a few, but I came away feeling that the process was more fair and reasonable than I'd been led to believe. Now, granted, I'm an embedded software guy and maybe they tailored the questions for me, but I feel like I wasted a month going over graph algorithms. It was a good learning experience, but my time would have been better spent reviewing more basic embedded topics.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dominotw 8y ago
I definitely got graph questions at google, facebook and two other smaller startups.
earthicus 8y ago
You might look at Laub [1] for a short, somewhat advanced overview of linear algebra with some differential equations, as it's applied to classical engineering and science. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898715768/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0898715768/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
gumby 8y ago
Skimming the materials at Open Courseware is really good. Just reading the problem sets from the thermo course I took 30 years ago brought back lots of buried memories and forced me to learn some stuff I honestly hadn't at the time. It's not taking an online course -- it's all the material handed out with an offline course. https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
- 1ark 8y ago
  It's a good strategy. Refreshing and bringing back the memories, and patching some knowledge holes.
ultrasounder 8y ago
"my time would have been better spent reviewing more basic embedded topics." In my own experience embedded topics have all been a derivative of my experience working on embedded systems( I Interviewed for a EE role). What kind of embedded questions were you asked ?
- 01100011 8y ago
  Some things relating to board bringup(power-on to when the bios boots the OS, how DDR memory is initialized, etc). Basic algorithms(bit counting), atomics, virtual memory, malloc()/free() implementations, etc. Given system X and problem Y, what could cause problem Y. Not strictly embedded, but definitely not graph theory.
  - ultrasounder 8y ago
    Great!Thanks for sharing. And Good luck with interviews.

herodotus 8y ago

>A math genius called Alan Turing joined the British military to crack the German “Enigma” code. He knew they would never get ahead if they keep doing the calculations by pen and paper. So after many months of hard work, they built a machine. Unfortunately, It took more than a day to decode a message! So, it was useless :(((( I could not read past this. Yet another distortion of what was done at Bletchley Park. Yes, I understand, keep your readers interested, but not by making up stuff and claiming it was real. I think the author should find a better example of an import use of algorithms than this one.

adriansky 8y ago
What's your understanding about what happened at Bletchley Park?
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  The machine wasn't useless.
- herodotus 8y ago
  To answer that would take an entire book! One book you might try is "Battle of Wits" by Stephen Budiansky, published in 2000 by The Free Press. ISBN: 0-684-85932-7 There was never a single break through at Bletchley. The Bombe machines (there were eventually many of them) were useful, but were just one part of the overall effort, and they did not always get results. The idea that all messages ended with "Heil Hitler!" is just wrong.
billhathaway 8y ago
The next sentences are: Alan’s team found out that every encrypted message ended with the same string: “Heil Hitler” Aha! After changing the algorithm, the machine was to decoded in minutes rather than days!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sigi45 8y ago

Liked your writeup on balancing trees :-) My biggest issue: The amount! You can do more algorithm and datastructres! Greedy, Divide and Conquer etc.