This is really not so easy course , i understood after completing the course. I am beginner and from beginner's perspective this is really hard course because in assignments i was taking 8 days and in the last assignment (WEEK-4) ,i took whooping 18 days because i didn't had knowledge of data structure which was very much required to do karger min-cut algorithm.But in the end this course is really pushing you to stretch your thinking capabilities and this is really very good because to figure out about something which you don't have any idea is really mind-boggling ,also it's very frustating but after the problem is done we feel like we have won battle and that feeling is invincible.Tim is not really spoon feeder that's why for 9 minutes video i had to give 3 hours ,this happened may be because i am beginner or the course itself is hard.In the end i thank Professor Tim Roughgarden for creating such amazing course which forces people to think for days in order to solve assignments.Thank you Tim once again.

Challenging and highly informative course. Professor Roughgarden has a concise and candid lecturing style that I found easy and pleasant to follow.

Make sure you're comfortable with one programming language, and have some experience in writing programs. There is a lot of math, and while not super advanced, make sure you've brushed up on: logarithmic identities, infinite sums, and counting (permutations and combinations). The course dives into some probability, but Professor Roughgarden will walk you through some optional (and very instructive) review lectures.

I'm looking to finishing the specialization, but I'll take some time off to review my discrete mathematics, and strengthen my programming first. This is my first MOOCS course, and I'm hoping all my future experiences will be as great. I highly recommend the course and Professor Roughgarden's lectures.

I audited this course and I believe this course is going to help me build my future career. I'm in transition between my original degree (engineering) to computer science, and I want to build a great foundation of my knowledge. For me, with little computer knowledge, this course was great. The syllabus is complete and covers essential material. The instructor explains everything clearly. although he talks a bit fast for me (I'm not native but I'm studying in an english language school).

It is a good combination of the algorithms and the math behind them. not too much math. The homework at the end of each week is also helpful to practice what you learned in videos. (Although I couldn't see the answers)

in Overall, it's a great course, and I recommend it to anyone with a passion for computer science.

I found this course to be an ideal mix of abstract theory and practical application. Professor Roughgarden is quite adept at presenting in depth analyses of algorithms in a way that does not shy away from formal mathematics but also does not require a degree in mathematics to understand. For me, whose prior math coursework was mainly focused on areas of math not as prevalent in computer science as other in disciplines (e.g. calculus vs. discrete math), Professor Roughgarden's approach is ideal and opened up the door to a much deeper understanding of algorithms than I've acquired on my own over a multi-decade career in programming.

Highly recommend this course for anyone who, like me, has a lot of experience with programming, but no formal training on algorithms.

Loved the clarity and enthusiasm. The proofs and algorithm implementations shared in this class are often simpler and more elegant than the proofs and implementations I've found in other textbooks.

Just a few examples: 1. The proof of Quicksort's expected comparisons count was great. The course used a beautiful, simple proof summing the values of indicator variables whereas other proofs I've seen use a messy inductive approach. 2. The implementation of partition was much simpler than most other partition implementations I've seen, which tend to walk from the left and right swapping items.

The simplicity of the proofs and algorithm implementations make the material more beautiful. Thank you!

The course content and explanations are fantastic. The instructor has a nice intuitive lecturing style. However, it is relatively difficult compared to other Coursera courses, especially the optional exercises (which I think is a plus). My only issue with the course is the programing assignments. They are good practice for the material. However, other Coursera courses have better integrated assignments. Perhaps the current design is a necessary evil if they wish to keep the course accessible to all programing languages. I'm currently using Python. However, I feel like I should be using a lower level language like C, especially on an optimization focused course like this.

This was my first time diving into algorithms, it was indeed challenging as my math skills had been long kept in the dark since my Computer Eng. Diploma, it sent me doing research that in turn expanded my understanding of the concepts, I almost felt frustrated especially with the analysis videos, probability concepts were a challenge and I intend to take a detailed math refresher course as I continue with the remaining courses, hopefully after this I will keep my math alive for life. Thanks for the challenge in this course, it kept me pacing and it was indeed worth it, i hope to research other algorithm in sorting and other concepts discussed here, Thanks.

Very interesting. I learned a lot of new things. 5 stars!

Just a few things that could be improved:

-- The video and its audio are not really synchronized (maybe because the video is pretty old)

-- The Quicksort programming assignment was like: 1 hour to program a working Quicksort + 4 hours figuring out how the course creator wants me to count the compares of it as that's dependent from the implementation.

Nowadays there are better solutions to validate whether someone solved a programming task. geeksforgeeks.org and hackerrank.com for example just execute the program with test input.

But all in all: Very positive experience.

The Course is very challenging and also very rewarding! The professor motivate you showing real applications about the algorithms he talk about. This course review the math analysis of the algorithms and also require that you implement some of these algorithms. The course required me dedicate many hours during week (some weeks more than 15 hours) but each programming assignment done is very rewarding and I could learn better some of these topics which I took last semester at my university. Thanks professor Tim Roughgarden!! and thanks to all the team behind this course!

Excellent course. What I valued most about this course was the clarity with which proofs and algorithms are explained. In learning algorithms one really profits from a great professor. Keep in mind that this course involves mathematics for proofs and I believe one has to be really curious about algorithms and dive into proofs to take full advantage of this course. Regarding assignments they are challenging but definitely approachable if you have some experience in programming. My advice: do not get discouraged, this is all about resilience!

A lot of repetitions of the same thing. It seems like one idea could be taught in <3 minutes but instead we recover previous material and repeat the same thing resulting in >10min. Still a great course. Lack of solutions for programming assignment. I spent a day trying to find on web a good implementation of karger's algo for min cut problem and didn't find what I was looking for, they all make same mistakes in implementations like copy the entire graph, sample not uniformly or copy all edges to list from set just to sample one.

lectures were great. Pace was just right. It is great being able to repeat parts of the lecture to improve your understanding. I only wish the Part 1: Basics books covered the week on graphs and the contraction algorithm. The Algorithms Illustrated book was a great companion for the course. Not having a book companion made the graphs and contraction algorithm material a little more difficult.

I like the the lectures are not copies of the book. The flow of topics match, but the explanations in lecture are often different.

Great course on divide and conquer algorithms. For a MOOC I felt like this course provided a fair amount of rigor which is great if that is what you are looking for. Prof. Roughgarden focuses on mathematical proofs which is a weak spot of mine and it challenged me without being too much for me to figure out and grasp. The assignments are quite refreshing since they allow you to implement an algorithm as you see fit, I learned a lot about programming in general by developing my own implementations of these algorithms.

This is a great course. The teacher is very clear, and the material is very interesting. The programming assignments are interesting: the problems asked are very simple, but the input is generally too large to use brute force: you really have to implement the algorithms presented in the videos. This makes you realize how much smart algorithms can make a difference.

The level of the class is relatively high, compared to other Coursera courses I've taken. If you want some serious training on algorithms, look no further.

This is the place to start upgrading your programming skills to the next level. If you have some prior programming experience solving problems with data, but have never rigorously looked at the efficiency of your algorithm and wondered "Can this be better?" this course is designed for you. You'll learn to think and talk like a software engineer and not just a computer programmer. The course has some very practical problems to solve, which will give you a sense of empowerment to tackle big data sets with ease.

Roughgarden creates a great mental model for algorithms. He explains the ideas that connect them and how they are organized. He doesn't waste your time, hitting the key components in both the math proofs and in explaining the algorithm implementation. The way he teaches in like induction; he uses a super simple example (base case) and abstracts that out to get the general case.

After the course, I *get* algorithms now... (instead of memorizing them, I can see how to deduce them). Thank you!

I was always looking for a good material to study this complicated topic , and after a lot of purchases and digging , I finally found this course , these sequence of courses will not give you every detail about every algorithm in the universe but it will give you the knowledge that will enable you to walk alone in the street of algorithms . Really great course , I'm still in course no 2 of the 4 courses but i'm very happy of what i've seen so far and looking forward to finish them all isA

Tim gives great insights and draws attention to the right things at right time! Exercise and quizzes are very helpful and makes you think in right direction. Also the in-video-quizzes are well thought of to make you think about the topic being described in the video and thus makes it easy to understand the contents. This is just the right course anyone should take to improve/learn algorithm and data structures course. I've got got aaha! moments multiple times. Can't thank Tim enough!!

I had a great time taking this course. It was a very good course in algorithms that explained the core concepts really well rather than just providing a high level overview. The assignments take some time but it aligns with what the instructor is teaching. The instructor is absolutely excellent because he takes the time to go through the math and iterations which helps to develop a deeper intuition for these algorithms. Looking forward to completing his other courses when I got time.

This course immersed me in the fundamentals of one of the most interesting and useful problem solving methods in computer science.

Each problem assignment is so carefully thought out, that it forced me to apply what I learned and constantly ask myself "could I do better?"

Very well combined with historical reviews and mentions of the "protagonist of the week", which enriches the learning and made me get closer to the way of thinking of those who pushed our beloved computer science.

I learned more from this course than any other study I have done in 3 years I have been studying programming. Great professor, great content. I advise anyone who is interested in programming to take this course to see how computer scientists think, and how they use math in theoretical sense. Being a math major myself, I immensely enjoyed how the course was structured around proofs and theorems, and at the same time I found it easy to digest.

What a wonderful journey.Tim Roughgarden is one of the best instructor I have ever encountered, this course is very totally worth it and goes very well and indepth, the problem covered and the material discussed were just WOW!.

But I won't suggest this course to any beginner as this course is sort of high-level and also requires you to have a strong fundamental knowledge. Overall best course looking forward to the 2nd course now.

This was perfect introductory class for me to begin my learning on algorithm. As the instructor said at the introduction, many of the algorithms were fun and challenging and the explanation of the instructor was great. Although the fact which the Programming Assignments do not check the actual code but the final output was the only downside of this class, everything else is great for checking one's understanding of the course.

The instructor is very good. He is very knowledgeable and keeps the lectures interesting. The homework assignments are good but only require to directly implement algorithms learned in the lectures. Maybe adding some assignment which requires a use of some algorithm but with some trick/ingenuity on how to use it would be nice. Moreover, the final exam was too easy to my taste. Other than that, really great and fun course.

This course not only taught me some basic concepts of algorithm but also taught me how to analyse the underneath disciplines as well as how to manipulate them. The analysis using probability seems complicated at first, however, the instructor managed to illustrate it in an easy way. I especially love the assignments, they are very enlightening. The test cases in the forum is also of great help in my debugging process.