Ernie's 3D Pancakes

Buy My Free Book!

I'm happy to finally announce the publication of an actual dead-tree paperback edition of my Algorithms textbook.  The book can be purchased from Amazon (US, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT, JP), for the ludicrous price of $27.50 (or the equivalent in pounds, euros, and yen).

I've also updated the freely available, full-color electronic version at http://algorithms.wtf; this electronic version will remain free indefinitely.  The same site includes several additional lecture notes and other course materials.

Thanks to everyone who reported dozens of errors in the 0th and ½th edition on the Github issue-tracker.  Please keep the bug reports and feature requests coming!

Enjoy!

Steal This Book!

Today I'm finally releasing a final (or more honestly, “final”) pre-publication draft of my Algorithms textbook under a CC-BY license. This 448-page textbook evolved out of a subset of the algorithms lecture notes I've been maintaining for about 20 years.

There are still a few more steps before this becomes an actual paper book—most notably an index—but I wanted to get this out the door this year. I expect to publish the actual paper book in a few weeks; it will also be licensed CC-BY.

Meanwhile, I've set up an issue-tracker on Github where anyone can report errors or provide other feedback.

The book site also includes copies of the lecture notes that I left out of the book (because I wanted a finite book in a finite amount of time), along with a complete archive of old homeworks, exams, lab handouts, and the like.

Enjoy!

• Official book site: http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/
• Mnemonic shortcut: http://algorithms.wtf
• Please report errors: https://github.com/jeffgerickson/algorithms
• Archival copy: https://archive.org/details/Algorithms-Jeff-Erickson

My spoon is too big.

Like Sariel, my SODA submission was, um, offered an opportunity to submit elsewhere.

Sigh. Now it is my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours.

So say we all.

When all else is lost, and one’s scientific paper is beginning to make too much sense, read too clearly, and display too much insight and enthusiasm, I have one last recommendation that can help the author to maintain the essential boring tone. My advice is to make sure that all written statements, even trivial ones, must be supported by one or more references. It does not matter that these statements are self-evident or that they comply with well-established knowledge, add a reference, or preferable 3–5, anyhow.

Excessive quotation can be developed to perfection such that the meaning of whole paragraphs is veiled in the limited space between references. This technique maintains the boring quality of scientific publications by slowing down the reader, hiding any interesting information, and taking up valuable space. When authors are unsure of which paper to cite, they should always resort to citing their own work regardless of its relevance.

—Kaj Sand-Jensen, “How to write consistently boring scientific literature”, Oikos 116:723–727, 2007.

A scientific manuscript is intended to communicate new information and to teach new material to a willing audience. Many authors forget this simple fact; rather, they view the writing process as an opportunity to bolster their own egos and impress the reader, even discomfit the reader somewhat, either with too much material or too little.

—Stephen D. Senturia, “How to Avoid the Reviewer’s Axe: One Editor’s View”, J MEMS 12(3):229–232, 2003.

[via MF]

Destroying the Book Meme

Starting from New Kid's list:

1. Jonathan Lethem
2. Lynda Barry
3. J. R. R. Tolkien
4. Martin Gardner
5. Brian Michael Bendis
6. J. K. Rowling
7. Connie Willis
8. Jiří Matoušek
9. Margaret Atwood
10. William Shakespeare

Copy this list of 10 authors, and replace each author not on your bookshelves with one that is. (Replaced authors are in bold.)

How To Be a Successful Writer in Ten Minutes

Yet another list of suggestions for transforming creativity into success, this time from Stephen King.

1. Be talented.
   
2. Be neat.
   
3. Be self-critical.
   
4. Remove every extraneous word.
   
5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft.
   
6. Know the markets.
   
7. Write to entertain.
   
8. Ask yourself frequently, “Am I having fun?”
   
9. How to evalute criticism.
   
10. Observe all rules for proper submission.
    
11. An agent? Forget it. For now.
    
12. If it's bad, kill it.

... = writing?

One more item to add to the equivalence class of research and creativity and hacking: Neil Gaiman's advice to authors.

How do you do it? You do it.
You write.
You finish what you write.