Most professional programmers that I've encountered are not well prepared to tacklealgorithmdesignproblems.Thisisapity, becausethetechniquesofalgorithm design form one of the core practical technologies of computer science. Designing correct, ecient, and implementable algorithms for real-world problems requires access to two distinct bodies of knowledge - Techniques - Good algorithm designers understand several fundamental - gorithm design techniques, including data structures, dynamic programming, depth-rst search, backtracking, and heuristics. Perhaps the single most - portantdesigntechniqueismodeling, theartofabstractingamessyreal-world application into a clean problem suitable for algorithmic attack. - Resources - Good algorithm designers stand on the shoulders of giants. Ratherthanlaboringfromscratchtoproduceanewalgorithmforeverytask, they can gure out what is known about a particular problem. Rather than re-implementing popular algorithms from scratch, they seek existing imp- men