Beginning Algorithms
Chapter One
Getting Started
This journey into the world of algorithms begins with some preparation and background information.
You'll need to know a few things before learning the many algorithms and data structures in
the rest of the book. Although you're keen to get going, reading this chapter will make the rest of
the book more useful for you, as it includes concepts that are prerequisites for understanding the
explanations of all the code and the analyses of the algorithms themselves.
This chapter discusses:
What an algorithm is
The role of algorithms in software and everyday life
What is meant by the complexity of an algorithm
Several broad classes of algorithm complexity that enable you to distinguish quickly
between different solutions to the same problem
"Big-O" notation
What unit testing is and why it is important
How to write unit tests with JUnit
Defining Algorithms
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