Chevron Left
Back to Algorithmic Toolbox

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Algorithmic Toolbox by University of California San Diego

4.6
stars
12,346 ratings

About the Course

This online course covers basic algorithmic techniques and ideas for computational problems arising frequently in practical applications: sorting and searching, divide and conquer, greedy algorithms, dynamic programming. We will learn a lot of theory: how to sort data and how it helps for searching; how to break a large problem into pieces and solve them recursively; when it makes sense to proceed greedily; how dynamic programming is used in genomic studies. You will practice solving computational problems, designing new algorithms, and implementing solutions efficiently (so that they run in less than a second)....

Top reviews

SG

Jan 19, 2017

I liked the fact that the algorithms are not just the introductory searching and sorting algorithms. The assignments are fairly difficult (I have decent scripting experience), but not impossibly so.

BD

Jan 19, 2021

The course was really amazing which provided deep knowledge from basic to advance that how algorithms works and how to design algorithms. Thanks to all the expert teachers who taught in this course.

Filter by:

1851 - 1875 of 2,544 Reviews for Algorithmic Toolbox

By Maximilian R

•

Jun 13, 2017

Overall, a very good course. Really its truly amazing that this course is pretty much language agnostic and you can use whatever you know or feel like. Really frees you from the esoteric details, to focus on the algorithms themselves. Do wish the last chapter on dynamic programming could have been better explained or split into 2 weeks.

By Sergey A S

•

Jul 30, 2016

The course gives a good overview on the algorithms types and problems, but it's cannot be used as standalone source of algorith,s learning. You should use good textbook as well.

The programming challenges are really interesting (and challenging), sometimes it took for me a couple of evenings to complete all five week assignments.

Thanks!

By Robin S S

•

Jan 13, 2020

I loved the difficulty of the problems throughout the course, and I was properly challenged at every step. However, I feel like the 5th and 6th week needed more thorough and clearer explanation on dynamic programming. The videos alone were not enough for me, and I had to lean on a fair number of external sources to learn the material.

By CR T

•

Jul 1, 2018

Too much content I think all the type of algortihm are in one course like dynamic programming and greedy algorithm . This will take more time to complete and understanding. But still overall this course is very good . problem statement are good and forum will help in many ways. I have already completed 2-3 course offered by UCSD .

By Debwashis B

•

May 27, 2020

Dynamic Programming concepts should be improved. I have to see others videos for fulfilling the concepts. Knapsack tables or other tables essential for dynamic programming are not good in this course. It should include videos for a better understanding of how to code. Otherwise, this course design is very good and helpful. Thanks

By Sarthak S

•

Feb 27, 2021

Even though the instructors are good, the explanations and teaching content overall is lacking. The problems offered in course are those classical advanced CS problems and more videos and explanations are required in my opinion and the most important part i.e. 'How to think in Algorithms' should be the priority content to teach.

By vivek r

•

Jul 13, 2018

Programming Assignments are simply brilliant. However, explanations are not clear, partly due to the instructors language. Nonetheless i would recommend this course. (Note: My programming language was python. I don't know about other languages but don't take this course in C, if so you'll curse yourself for taking this course)

By Il P R

•

Sep 3, 2021

The course introduces applications and explanations of some basic algorithms, sometimes the content is incoherent and somewhat hard to follow without certain academic background, however, inspiring and interesting reading materials are provided. Be prepared to think hard on your own and reach for more resources on other webs.

By Ananth C

•

May 12, 2018

Great course. Would rate 5* if there was more buildup along the lines of stress testing in the early assignments. Your code is only as good as the robustness of the testing. If you don't follow a test-driven methodology, you don't really have a solution even if you pass the grader. A great resource for the community.

By Moataz E

•

Jul 14, 2020

The course is really good and knowledgeable but I expect to see week discussing recursion with memorization and backtracking and I think it should be included in one of the two weeks of dynamic programming.

The assignments are really useful and some of them are difficult and most of them needs time more than stated

By Yuan H

•

May 12, 2021

The course is overall structured well. The assignments were difficult for beginners, especially because inefficient algorithms are considered insufficient to pass. Resources are scarce when bumped into a roadblock for the problems so it requires persistence in overcoming the challenges. Overall worth the effort.

By Nimit J

•

Jul 22, 2020

I felt that the explanations related with Dynamic Programming were hard to understand and keep up with, i had to refer to external sources on the net and YouTube.

Apart from that i learned quite a lot from this course, their were many at times were i found the explanations really easy to understand and intuitive.

By Hitvardhan

•

Jun 8, 2020

I like the way the professors explained using real-world scenarios and toy examples. However, the dynamic programming section was a bit complicated and I had to watch additional youtube videos and read additional articles to fully grasp the concepts. The dynamic programming videos can be further improved.

By Kunal P

•

Apr 1, 2021

The assignments were really tough...! The way the instructors explained the course was exceptional.

Improvements are need ...when we try to submit the code..., some times we can't upload the code...just need to try it over again and again. The overall experience is pretty good. It really helped me alot..!

By Joseph L M

•

Dec 29, 2020

Liked the class. Learned a lot. Somethings, however, were not very intuitive to figure out from the lessons and I struggled with many of them. Eventually, I figured out the teaching style and the key points behind the lesson and I was able to complete nearly all of the problems in the last two weeks.

By Chey Y

•

Jul 17, 2017

I thought this was a great course and the assignments were very fun. I needed a lot of outside reading to learn enough to complete the problems. It would have been great to have more resources that were deemed by the teachers to be useful. Overall I really loved it. Excited for the rest of the classes!

By rajat k a

•

Oct 16, 2017

the course was too good it changed my idea of thinking towards solving a problem it just lacked some support like test case error's does not notify us for which input our output goes wrong some time it passes a lot of test cases yet fails at last although it helped me how to figure out corner cases.

By ABHISHEK G

•

Jul 21, 2020

This very wonderful lecture for a student like me who has not much experience of coding by this course will get enough assignment for practices and that also important for the course evaluation. for me, it's a great experience with algorithm tools and this knowledge to apply in my domain of study.

By Aquib R

•

May 24, 2020

The course was very helpful in understanf=ding the working of algorithms and building up your own strategy for different similar questions. However, I was expecting a little bit of more code related help in the last part of dynamic programming. Nevertheless, it was a wholesome learning experience.

By AW

•

Jul 28, 2016

The content covered in this course is great. However, I hope there was a more efficient way to communicate with student. I hope there is a way to bring student together like a group chat function in the coursera app. So, people who want to be more committed can communicate more often and effcient.

By unnamed_vv

•

Dec 5, 2019

It's a wonderful course in which I learned details of greedy algorithm, divide and conquer algorithm and dynamic programming. However, the assignments is a little difficult and sometimes I couldn't come up with an idea at all. I hope the course would offer detailed answers after a period of time.

By Andres E B

•

Sep 5, 2022

It's a good course where you learn different ways to reach and solve a problem, to improve the course you should teach how to calculate all the Big O notations of each algorithm that is teached here, such as the last week where explain why the Big O notation of of the knapsack problem is O(nW)

By DEVANSH R

•

Mar 30, 2020

the constraints condition are very strict while submitting the assignments, like in knapsack in week 6, is was getting unknown signal 11 while i was storing values in 2d array, when i changed the array to 2d vector i got the correct output on the grader, else overall was a good experience

By Aman J

•

Aug 23, 2017

Great Work! thanks a lot to the Coursera and Course instructors.

Some test cases shows only wrong answer not any information about why and what is going wrong

A little hard to find what is wrong with your code specially when it gives the current answer with examples on the pdf file

By Gerges w T

•

Jul 19, 2020

The course is pretty much useful and helped me a lot to understand hard algorithmic techniques. The explanation was very good,, and the Assignments covered all the ideas in a professional manner and were not trivial especially the advanced problems were a great challenge to me.