A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms

How to Read This Book

You’ve got to read this book in order. There are books out there where you can read each chapter independently and skip around a bit, but this is not one of them. Each chapter assumes that you’ve read the previous ones, and the book is carefully constructed so that you can ramp up your understanding as you proceed.

Another important note: to make this book easy to understand, I don’t always reveal everything about a particular concept when I introduce it. Sometimes, the best way to break down a complex concept is to reveal a small piece of it, and only reveal the next piece when the first piece has sunken in. If I define a particular term as such-and-such, don’t take that as the textbook definition until you’ve completed ...