Training Resources

Most of the learning and training is carried out at an individual level, this is to be expected since programming is something that needs lots of practice. We also provide a series of short training workshops during the semester 2 holidays.

The following are some online resources which you might find to be useful:

• USACO An excellent training website for IOI type problems. This site provides both training materials as well as a lot of quality problems to practice on. Unlike UVA, USACO organises the problems into categories and according to the difficulty level and this makes it more suitable for beginners.

• The Spanish (UVA) Judge website The foremost repository of computer programming problems on the Internet.

• World of Seven Created by our very own Steven Halim to help those who are new to the Spanish Judge. The section on algorithms is especially helpful.

• Algorithm Design Manual is a companion website for the book of the same name by Steven Skiena. It contains a list of “standard” problems and excerpts from the book..

• More training resources can be found on the Related Sites page.

• How to solve it by G. Polya is a well known book on problem solving techniques, although the examples presented in the book are of a mathematical nature they are elementary enough to be appreciated with only secondary school maths and the techniques described are general enough to be applied in many other areas.

• Problem solving across the disciplines by R. R. Kadesch is another book on problem solving, this time with a much wider selection of problems

• Programming Pearls and More Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley for a refreshing and informal introduction to problem solving, algorithms and data structures

• Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena for a more comprehensive look at algorithms and data structures with a number of real life stories of how they were applied to tackle an actual problem (known as “war stories” in the book)

• Programming Challenges by Skiena and Miguel is highly recommended, used in the course competitive programming, CS3233

• Introduction to Algorithms : A Creative Approach by Manber is useful for problems involving induction

• Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein is an advanced algorithms book used in the design and analysis of algorithms course, CS3230