Approach and Coverage

Methodology

The code samples in this course are written in the Java programming language. However, to make the course accessible to readers not familiar with all of Java’s constructs and keywords, the code samples have been simplified. For example, a reader won’t find any of the keywords public, protected, private, or static. A reader also won’t find much discussion about class hierarchies. Which interfaces a particular class implements or which class it extends, if relevant to the discussion, should be clear from the accompanying text.

These conventions should make the code samples understandable by anyone with a background in any of the languages from the ALGOL tradition, including B, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, D, Java, JavaScript, and so on. Readers who want the full details of all implementations are encouraged to look at the Java source code that accompanies this course.

This course mixes mathematical analyses of running times with Java source code for the algorithms being analyzed. This means that some equations contain variables also found in the source code. These variables are typeset consistently, both within the source code and within equations. The most common such variable is the variable ...