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Back to Divide and Conquer, Sorting and Searching, and Randomized Algorithms

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Divide and Conquer, Sorting and Searching, and Randomized Algorithms by Stanford University

4.8
stars
5,187 ratings

About the Course

The primary topics in this part of the specialization are: asymptotic ("Big-oh") notation, sorting and searching, divide and conquer (master method, integer and matrix multiplication, closest pair), and randomized algorithms (QuickSort, contraction algorithm for min cuts)....

Top reviews

KS

Sep 13, 2018

Well researched. Topics covered well, with walkthrough for exam.le cases for each new introduced algorithm. Great experience, learned a lot of important algorithms and algorithmic thinking practices.

DT

May 26, 2020

Thank you for teaching me this course. I learned a lot of new things, including Divide-and-Conquer, MergeSort, QuickSort, and Randomization Algorithms, along with proof for their asymptotic runtime

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951 - 975 of 988 Reviews for Divide and Conquer, Sorting and Searching, and Randomized Algorithms

By Tabrez M

•

Apr 28, 2020

good explanation

By aashirvad s

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Nov 11, 2022

everything good

By 张之晗(ZhiHan Z

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Aug 27, 2017

so challenging

By Akshar K

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Dec 2, 2022

good course

By Shuvro D

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Sep 10, 2021

good course

By Nguyen K T

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Jun 29, 2019

very hard

By Prachi M

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Jun 25, 2017

Excellent

By E.Naveen K

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Nov 30, 2016

Great

By Parag K D

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Apr 3, 2022

good

By Bianca D

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Jan 26, 2019

Took me way more than 7 hours/week to go through course materials and complete the problem sets and programming assignments. Closer to 10. In general the estimates for how much time each assignment takes is way off (often claiming on the order of minutes, when the reality is for most students (myself included) it is likely on the order of hours).

That said, the programming assignments were challenging and fun (especially trying to do them in JavaScript), and I feel much more comfortable with recursion and Big-Oh.

The forums for the current session are not very active, but there are a lot of old posts from past offerings of the course, and I found that most of the time others had similar questions to me.

The textbook was helpful, but it pretty much has the same content as the lectures with maybe some extra practice and challenge problems. Unfortunately not all solutions to those problems are available, which can be very frustrating (I noticed at least one practice problem with no solution was used on the final exam, so that’s probably why...).

This course is a little more academic than practical in my opinion as a software engineer, but you have to start somewhere.

By Peter C

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Feb 12, 2017

I was glad to get exposure to famous algorithms through this class, but I don't feel like I really developed an intuition for reasoning about their runtime. The class was challenging, but mostly for the wrong reasons. I spent more time and energy pouring over the answers to tricky quizzes and having to implement algorithms exactly as described in the lecture notes rather than really truly learning. It also took me much longer than the 4-8 hours per week advertised to complete each week.

By Aleksandr P

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Nov 7, 2016

It would be nice to see more examples especially were we have too many formulas. I still confused with probability.

Also hadwritting isnt really helping. I am most of the time decoding scripts. In addition he is reading the formula at one moment and in around 3-4 seconds it appears on the screen. So I kind of listening him while trying to read what is happening on the screen. horrible experience.

By Riqiang W

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Jan 17, 2018

This is not very beginner-friendly course, and what made it worse is that all the videos are out of sync (I don't know why this problem has not been addressed for 5 years), and the instructor's speaking manner is not easy to follow for a foreigner. Also a lot of the subtitles are just wrong. Otherwise a great course, if you keep on it you can learn a lot.

By 伊洛

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Dec 23, 2017

I do believe that feedbacks are very important during the learning section. Without feedbacks I would not understand whether I am doing ok or not. The Quiz and Homework would not handout the answer key and explanation after I have done. How am I suppose to be successful with the class if I don't understand which part I should strengthen.

By Sheng B

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Jan 28, 2019

This is a good course. I recommend everyone to take it. There are many details useful for you to learn. But it is not friendly. The words the professor used are not easy to follow for a non-native English, the way the exercises are designed is not reasonable. It could have been better.

By Mike L

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May 9, 2017

The professor is very good. However, pictures and graphics mean a thousand words. These lectures rely too much on words. It makes it how to visualize the concepts. Hope to see more pictures. Animation will be the best.

By Joern K

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Aug 9, 2018

Seems a bit dated, videos are reused from older courses and sometimes don't fit well together anymore. Content is great and lots of fun to work through.

By Austin B

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Feb 18, 2024

Very hard but its manageable. Make sure to watch videos multiple times to understand the concept.

By Hardik A

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Dec 22, 2018

Great course theory wise, but the programming problem is unrelated and gives too little practice

By David A

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Oct 19, 2020

Audio out of sync, sometimes material climbs in difficulty without the climb in explanation imo.

By Neelesh K

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Apr 25, 2020

The explanation could be better. The hand writing must be improved.

By Yash R

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Apr 23, 2020

The course goes too fast and it skips the basics.

By Nishtha

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Jun 20, 2020

i want to unenroll in this course. how to do so

By Budati N

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Nov 1, 2022

i have good experience to learn this couresa

By Mubin A

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Mar 2, 2020

concepts explanation need to improve