Hey everyone,
I recently started my CP journey and purchased a copy of CP4. I’m also working through Sedgewick’s Algorithms, Part 1 course on Coursera.
If anyone has used CP4/CP3 before and can compare the difficulty/pacing of CP-Book with USACO.guide and let me know which one I should begin with, I’d really appreciate it.
I’d probably recommend following the USACO Guide, but referencing CP4 frequently when you encounter topics that are new to you.
USACO Guide is split into USACO-specific divisions, whereas CP4 is not, so if you use CP4, you may end up learning about some Gold-level topic before learning about a Bronze-level topic, or you may learn about a topic that isn’t really necessary for USACO.
I’ve used CP3 heavily and I’ve purchased CP4 – I think they are fantastic books that I would personally highly recommend. I haven’t taken Sedgewick’s Algorithms course, though I would probably suggest using USACO Guide or CP4 rather than following an Algorithms course.
CP4 sounds really interesting… Do you know where I can find a table of contents of the book? I can’t seem to find it.
I think it’s on the author’s Facebook?
This is book 1 I think… https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157368194927304&id=725577303
And book 2 table of contents should be the post right after it.
Thanks for your prompt response! Yeah, I agree that USACO guide would probably give me a smoother progression in terms of difficulty of topics, making it a better introduction than CP4 at this stage in my CP Career. I plan to start on CP4 once I’ve completed the Bronze and Silver sections of Guide.
The reason why I’m going through the Algorithms course is because the authors of CP4 recommended having a first year data structures and algorithms background or working through a similar course concurrently with the book.
Here’s a link to the differences between CP3 and CP4, hope this helps.
Meh, I don’t think it’s really that necessary? Between Google, USACO Guide, and CP4 you should be fine as long as you have programming experience and you have the basic syntax down…
Alright, thanks. I’ll go through USACO Guide and refer to CP4/Google whenever there’s something that I’d like to learn more about. As for the Algorithms course, I wanted to go through a more formal introduction to Algorithms from a general standpoint (rather than CP), and have heard from several of my fellow CPers that Sedgewick’s course was a good place to start.
