The definitive algorithms book is Cormen : http://projects.csail.mit.edu/clrs/ http://projects.csail.mit.edu/clrs/ I think you should study this book and here i

The definitive algorithms book is Cormen : http://projects.csail.mit.edu/clrs/ http://projects.csail.mit.edu/clrs/ I think you should study this book and here is the MIT course to go along with it : http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-046JFall-2005/CourseHome/ http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute... Learning about NP complete problems is interesting to avoid certain pitfalls and mapping one problem to another is always a valuable technique, but it seems you are fairly new to analysis of algorithms so imho (having been a phd student focused on algorithms) this book and course is a great place to start. http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Creative-Approach-Udi-Manber/dp/0201120372 http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Creative-Approach-Udi-Manbe... this is also very good