

Show HN: I'm writing an illustrated introduction to algorithms [pdf] - egonschiele
http://www.manning.com/bhargava/GrokkingAlgorithms_MEAP_CH01.pdf

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mind_heist
Read thru all of the pages in this PDF - Here are a few quick observations &
requests.

(1)Could you reword this ? "You could start at the start" \- to something like
"You start at the beginning of the Phone book" Or "you could start searching
from the beginning of the book". This sounds really conversational , in fact a
lot of the text sounds conversational , I suppose you wanted it to be that way
!

(2)What is figure 1.2 for ? Is it to accompany the text that says "Now suppose
you log on to facebook" ? The picture here doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
I guess it could go to the side of the page when eventually typeset. When I
see a picture in between paragraphs , I automatically think of it as an
explanatory picture and not something that has been added for 'fun factor'

(3) And figure 1.3 is not doing a good job at explaining itself too :( Is that
hour-glass shape 'the algorithm' in itself ?

(4) The number guessing game and all of the associated illustrations are nice.

(5) "1.2.1 Algorithm speed is not measured in seconds" is really cool. I had a
lot of troubles understanding why asymptotic analysis was necessary when I was
first introduced to it. This sort of explains clearly that "seconds" is not
the metric for analyzing the speed of algorithms. upvoting this part of the
book :)

Good luck !

~~~
egonschiele
Thanks for the feedback!

1\. I will change this.

2\. The formatting is misleading here. The final book will have very different
formatting. There are a lot of "fun" images in the book, but it is confusing
that they still have a label like "figure 1.2". They serve no purpose except
to provide a mental break.

3\. This figure got removed in a rewrite.

4 & 5\. Thanks!

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egonschiele
Hi HN! I'm posting this today because the book is half off today. The target
market is bootcamp students and undergrads looking for an easier introduction
to algorithms. I've seen a positive reaction to it so far!

The half off code is dotd081814au at www.manning.com/bhargava.

