As the title says, this is my personal summary of Algorithms, Part I on Coursera.

Finally! q(≧▽≦q)

I enrolled in this course about a month ago and have just finished it. Although the system decided that I had completed the course when my last assignment was due on the 2nd of May, I actually finished Week 06 about ten days later. No deadline, no motivation. >_<

The course is called Algorithms, Part I. (There is Part II, of course, but I haven’t signed up for it yet.) The teacher is Prof. Robert Sedgewick from Princeton University, also the author of the famous book Algorithms. Although this course is from a few years ago, it’s still one of the top courses today.

The biggest feature of this course is that it ties algorithms so closely to real-world problems. Almost all topics are introduced this way: Here we have a problem. To solve it, we can easily use … But we can’t do that because it’s too expensive, so we can try to use … to solve it. By using this algorithm, we can ensure that … in the case of … Also, we can use this algorithm to solve … problems. I think this kind of combination between theory and practice is really valuable.

The five projects are amazing. Instead of writing stupid experiment reports, uploading them to the QQ group and not knowing whether my codes are good or not, this online platform provides an incredible evaluation system that not only checks the correctness of your codes, but also the style! The style! Much better than some Chinese reference books! After each submission, the evaluation system gives you a detailed report on what’s wrong with your codes, and you can then correct or polish your codes and submit them again. I submitted the last project thirteen times to pass it, with the help of GPT and even some reference codes! Orz

I’d highly recommend any CS student to take this course on Coursera. It’s free and in my opinion it’s actually much easier than the listening section of the national college entrance examination or CET-4.