Exam Review – Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Stanford – part 1)
Oh oh oh, merry Christmas to everyone! Luckily for me, i’m not Santa, but i want to give you a gift anyway! (obviously, it’s just another review). Today, the topic is design and analysis of algorithms, and i’m reviewing this MOOC built by Stanford
The Course
First of all, let me say that this course is terrific good and challenging. I spent, somehow, more than 100 hours on this course, counting the weekly programming assignments. The course is 7 weeks long (with the final exam), but it feels endless, for real. The topics covered are a mixture between a design and analysis standard course (which is usually strongly related to mathematic analysis of algorithms, but i can be wrong) and an usual data structure and algorithms course. The topics covered starts from basic sorting operations to hash tables and functions in the sixth week. I found it really useful for a further understanding of ds & a and for a recap too. summarizing, i really liked it
The lectures
Tim Roughgarden (the lecturer during the entire course) is a fantastic lecturer and professor. The subjects are taught well and clearly although some of them aren’t that easy to understand. The videos are usually filled up with implementation (using pseudocode) and examples of data structures and algorithm, for a better understanding. The most difficult thing for me (in addition to coding) was to understand mr. Roughgarden during the lectures (yeah, he speaks fast, but is probably due to the poor english skills of mine). Besides that (the solution is basically stop the video, take notes and, eventually, come back), the lessons are (as above) really good and full of useful informations for everyone who wants to be a better programmer!
The Exercises
Here comes the worst (or the best) part of the course. The weekly assignments are not only difficult to accomplish, but, without a proper implementation, endless to compile for the computer. That’s due to the size of the input, which can vary from 10k elements to sort, to over 5 millions edges for a directed graph. Using, for example, a O(nlogn) procedure over the 5 million lines input, the compilers takes hours (even days, probably) to complete. This is probably the most important thing of the entire MOOC, which is dealing with real world problems, and come over. I managed to accomplish only the 40, maybe 50% of them (like 4 outta 6). In addition, there are some theoretical problems (usually related to mathematics), which aren’t easy, truly speaking.
The Exam and a final recap
The exam is hard. It’s composed only by theoretical question, but many of them are challenging. Moreover, to pass the exam, you need to score at least 80%, which isn’t a low score! I managed to get it, but the second time, and only with a 81% score, which is not that good.
The last thing to notice is that this course is no more available on Coursera, sadly, but another good alternative is the Design and Analysis of Algorithm course done by MIT. I liked a lot this course, but it really drained my life away. As usual, from 0 to 10, the ranking is at least 9. Really good job, Stanford, it was a pleasure to study with you! 🙂
See you in the next review!! 😉
The Course
First of all, let me say that this course is terrific good and challenging. I spent, somehow, more than 100 hours on this course, counting the weekly programming assignments. The course is 7 weeks long (with the final exam), but it feels endless, for real. The topics covered are a mixture between a design and analysis standard course (which is usually strongly related to mathematic analysis of algorithms, but i can be wrong) and an usual data structure and algorithms course. The topics covered starts from basic sorting operations to hash tables and functions in the sixth week. I found it really useful for a further understanding of ds & a and for a recap too. summarizing, i really liked it
The lectures
Tim Roughgarden (the lecturer during the entire course) is a fantastic lecturer and professor. The subjects are taught well and clearly although some of them aren’t that easy to understand. The videos are usually filled up with implementation (using pseudocode) and examples of data structures and algorithm, for a better understanding. The most difficult thing for me (in addition to coding) was to understand mr. Roughgarden during the lectures (yeah, he speaks fast, but is probably due to the poor english skills of mine). Besides that (the solution is basically stop the video, take notes and, eventually, come back), the lessons are (as above) really good and full of useful informations for everyone who wants to be a better programmer!
The Exercises
Here comes the worst (or the best) part of the course. The weekly assignments are not only difficult to accomplish, but, without a proper implementation, endless to compile for the computer. That’s due to the size of the input, which can vary from 10k elements to sort, to over 5 millions edges for a directed graph. Using, for example, a O(nlogn) procedure over the 5 million lines input, the compilers takes hours (even days, probably) to complete. This is probably the most important thing of the entire MOOC, which is dealing with real world problems, and come over. I managed to accomplish only the 40, maybe 50% of them (like 4 outta 6). In addition, there are some theoretical problems (usually related to mathematics), which aren’t easy, truly speaking.
The Exam and a final recap
The exam is hard. It’s composed only by theoretical question, but many of them are challenging. Moreover, to pass the exam, you need to score at least 80%, which isn’t a low score! I managed to get it, but the second time, and only with a 81% score, which is not that good.
The last thing to notice is that this course is no more available on Coursera, sadly, but another good alternative is the Design and Analysis of Algorithm course done by MIT. I liked a lot this course, but it really drained my life away. As usual, from 0 to 10, the ranking is at least 9. Really good job, Stanford, it was a pleasure to study with you! 🙂
See you in the next review!! 😉
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