Head First Algorithms and Data Structures

Table of Contents (the real thing)

• How to use this Book: Intro

  Your brain on algorithms. Here you are trying to learn something, while here your brain is doing you a favor by making sure the learning doesn’t stick. Your brain’s thinking, “Better leave room for more important things, like which wild animals to avoid and whether naked snowboarding is a bad idea.” So how do you trick your brain into thinking that your life depends on knowing algorithms and data structures?

  • “Who is this book for?”

  • “We know what you’re thinking”

  • “Metacognition: thinking about thinking”

  • “Here’s what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission”

  • “Read me”

  • “Acknowledgments”

• Chapter 1

  Why care about algorithms? Because they’re what make the difference between a quick search and a spinning wheel, an app people love and one they delete, and a startup that scales and one that crashes. It may even be the difference between a promotion and not.

  This book will rewire your brain to think about your code’s efficiency from the ground up. We’ll be seeing problems through a computer scientist’s eyes: breaking them down, identifying patterns, and creating solutions that work whether you’re sorting 10 items or 10 million. You’ll also learn to pair the right data structures with your algorithms, because even the best algorithm falls apart without the right data structure.

  • “Welcome to Micro-Storage”

  • “Looking at the code”

  • “Let’s put the code to the test”

  • “The second implementation”

  • “How binary search works”

  • “What ...