This is Donald E. Knuth's seminal survey of computer algorithms. I've begun volume 1 (Fundamental Algorithms) and have waded through some of the most challenging maths that I have seen for many years - not understanding it, I should emphasise, rather navigating through it so that I do not become utterly lost later on. While I have been surprised at how much of it made sense to me, I've also been using the pages full of sigmas to frighten others with.

Difficult as the early sections are, it is clear that the book is beautifully written. It's a pleasure to read something so rich in detail.

Update I finished reading the first volume, but have not yet picked up the others. I'll push this down the stack for now.

Update 03-May-2008 - useful to me as a reference only at the moment; simply don't have the spare thought cycles to do it justice.

Posted by Dunx at March 18, 2004 01:27 PM