You can generally use them to model a situation or improve it. For instance, if you're doing a dictionary, you'll be looking into a trie or Bloom filter, and it

You can generally use them to model a situation or improve it. For instance, if you're doing a dictionary, you'll be looking into a trie or Bloom filter, and it's generally like that I'm using it. Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual is great for the former approach, and has a cookbook feel to it, since most of it is just an index of different algorithms to use for different situations.