Algorithms in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12. Epilogue: Principles of Algorithms

While we have reached the end of this book, there is no limit to the amount of information you can find on algorithms about which you’re interested. Indeed, there is no end to the kind of problems to which you can apply the techniques presented in this book.

We finally have the opportunity to step back and review the nearly three dozen algorithms we described in detail and by example. We hope you agree that we have accomplished what we set out to do. To show the breadth of material that we’ve covered, we now summarize the principles behind the algorithms presented in this book. In doing so, we can demonstrate the similarities of different algorithms that were designed to solve different problems. Instead of simply summarizing each of the previous chapters, we’ll end this book by focusing on key principles that were instrumental in designing these algorithms in the first place. We also take this opportunity to summarize the concepts used by each algorithm. Thus, we provide a quick summary and make it possible to cross-index this book in terms of shared concepts across different algorithms.

Know Your Data

This book discussed a variety of common actions you might need to perform on some data. You might need to sort data to produce a specific ordering. You might need to search through data to locate a specific piece of information. Your data may be accessible in random access (where you can fetch any piece of information at any time) ...