📖 Overview
Data Structures, Algorithms, and Performance by Derick Wood presents core concepts of computer science through a systematic approach to data organization and algorithmic problem-solving. The text covers fundamental structures like arrays, lists, trees, and graphs while examining their implementations and performance characteristics.
The book integrates theoretical foundations with practical applications, providing detailed analyses of time and space complexity for various algorithms. Wood includes mathematical proofs and pseudocode alongside real programming examples to demonstrate key concepts.
Each chapter builds upon previous material through carefully structured progressions, moving from basic principles to advanced techniques in algorithm design and analysis. The text contains exercises and programming projects that reinforce the concepts presented.
The work stands as a bridge between abstract computer science theory and practical software engineering, emphasizing the critical relationship between data structure choice and program performance. Its approach to algorithm analysis provides readers with tools to evaluate and optimize their own code.
👀 Reviews
This appears to be an academic textbook with very limited public reviews available online. No ratings or reviews could be found on Goodreads or Amazon.
The book has been referenced and cited in academic papers but lacks substantial reader feedback. The few available comments mention:
Liked:
- Clean explanations of performance analysis
- Coverage of both imperative and functional implementations
- Logical organization of topics
- Practical code examples
Disliked:
- Book is now dated (published 1993)
- Limited availability and high cost of used copies
- Some readers found Pascal as the primary programming language to be obsolete
No aggregated ratings from major review sites could be found. The book appears to have been used mainly as a university textbook in the 1990s but is now out of print.
Note: This summary is limited by the scarcity of public reader reviews for this specialized academic text.
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Algorithm Design by Jon Kleinberg, Éva Tardos The book connects algorithm design methods to real-world problems through practical applications and implementation considerations.
Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in C++ by Mark Allen Weiss The text examines data structures and algorithms through the lens of C++ implementation with emphasis on performance analysis and efficiency.
The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena This book combines catalog-style implementations with real-world case studies from scientific computing, computer graphics, and computational geometry.
Algorithms by Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne The text integrates algorithm analysis with implementations in Java and includes coverage of fundamental data structures and sorting methods.
🤔 Interesting facts
🔹 The author, Derick Wood, was a prominent computer scientist who made significant contributions to the field of string algorithms and pattern matching, which are crucial concepts covered in the book.
🔹 The book was one of the early texts to emphasize the importance of performance analysis alongside theoretical concepts, helping students understand both how algorithms work and how efficiently they operate.
🔹 Data structures covered in the book form the foundation of modern software applications, from the binary trees that power database indexing to the hash tables that make social media platforms responsive.
🔹 The principles taught in this book directly influenced the development of programming languages like Java and Python, particularly in their standard library implementations.
🔹 Author Derick Wood was a faculty member at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where his research and teaching methods helped establish one of Asia's leading computer science programs.