Guide to Competitive Programming: Learning and Improving Algorithms Through Contests

by Antti Laaksonen

This invaluable textbook presents a comprehensive introduction to modern competitive programming. The text highlights how competitive programming has proven to be an excellent way to learn algorithms, by encouraging the design of algorithms that actually work, stimulating the improvement of programming and debugging skills, and reinforcing the type of thinking required to solve problems in a competitive setting. The book contains many "folklore" algorithm design tricks that are known by experienced competitive programmers, yet which have previously only been formally discussed in online forums and blog posts.

Topics and features: reviews the features of the C++ programming language, and describes how to create efficient algorithms that can quickly process large data sets; discusses sorting algorithms and binary search, and examines a selection of data structures of the C++ standard library; introduces the algorithm design technique of dynamic programming, and investigates elementary graph algorithms; covers such advanced algorithm design topics as bit-parallelism and amortized analysis, and presents a focus on efficiently processing array range queries; surveys specialized algorithms for trees, and discusses the mathematical topics that are relevant in competitive programming; examines advanced graph techniques, geometric algorithms, and string techniques; describes a selection of more advanced topics, including square root algorithms and dynamic programming optimization.

This easy-to-follow guide is an ideal reference for all students wishing to learn algorithms, and practice for programming contests. Knowledge of the basics of programming is assumed, but previous background in algorithm design or programming contests is not necessary. Due to the broad range of topics covered at various levels of difficulty, this book is suitable for both beginners and more experienced readers.

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Algorithms, Science, Coding, Technical

367 pages, Paperback

Published August 8, 2024

Reviews

[Max Pietsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book could be better. Specifically it could have questions and solutions for each section. However it has some info I haven't found elsewhere, and definitely had good insight into some types of problems.

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Описание задач на международных олимпиадах по программированию, основанное на std C++.
Ряд интересных алгоритмов, с которым не встречался раньше - например, counting sort.
Из минусов - много опечаток в листингах. Несколько раз думал, что я совсем тупой, пока не убеждался, что i и j перепутаны.
Главный же недостаток - эта книга больше похожа на шпаргалку, так как содержит информацию совершенно разного уровня абстракции - для каких-то задач автор описывает детали реализации в C++, обсуждая нюансы std, где-то приводит псевдокод, где-то лишь идею алгоритма.

[Vladimir]

Really good book for people that aren't complete beginners but aren't that advanced either. The explanations, illustrations and implementations are all pretty good.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of algorithms, but is much easier to read if you already know derivations and proofs. A lot of details are omitted about formality, but it helps keep the book short.

I like this book more for how compact it is and groups algorithms together, rather than how it teaches content, which I think would be very dense for someone new to the subject.

There are also a lot of more complicated algorithms that might be used in competitive programming that were not covered, e.g. maximal matching, augmenting paths, blossom algorithm, geometry, etc.

There also felt like a lack of formal proofs in the book for why algorithms worked. This is fine given the conciseness, but I felt a lot of times wondering if algorithms were meant to work or not (e.g. I was not convinced. Ofc it's supposed to work, but a short proof or intuition would be nice).

I think it would also be nice to explain tradeoffs between using different languages, e.g. C++ vs. Java vs. Python, and also maybe some basic concepts related to performance, such as memory management, instruction execution, locality, etc.

[Monirul Haque · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those who are interested in competitive programming can kickstart with this book.

[Vlad Cainamisir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the most underrated books for algorithms and data structures