Programming for the Puzzled: Learn to Program While Solving Puzzles

by Srini Devadas

Overview

Learning programming with one of “the coolest applications around”: algorithmic puzzles ranging from scheduling selfie time to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis.

This book builds a bridge between the recreational world of algorithmic puzzles (puzzles that can be solved by algorithms) and the pragmatic world of computer programming, teaching readers to program while solving puzzles. Few introductory students want to program for programming's sake. Puzzles are real-world applications that are attention grabbing, intriguing, and easy to describe.

Each lesson starts with the description of a puzzle. After a failed attempt or two at solving the puzzle, the reader arrives at an Aha! moment—a search strategy, data structure, or mathematical fact—and the solution presents itself. The solution to the puzzle becomes the specification of the code to be written. Readers will thus know what the code is supposed to do before seeing the code itself. This represents a pedagogical philosophy that decouples understanding the functionality of the code from understanding programming language syntax and semantics. Python syntax and semantics required to understand the code are explained as needed for each puzzle.

Readers need only the rudimentary grasp of programming concepts that can be obtained from introductory or AP computer science classes in high school. The book includes more than twenty puzzles and more than seventy programming exercises that vary in difficulty. Many of the puzzles are well known and have appeared in publications and on websites in many variations. They range from scheduling selfie time with celebrities to solving Sudoku problems in seconds to verifying the six degrees of separation hypothesis. The code for selected puzzle solutions is downloadable from the book's website; the code for all puzzle solutions is available to instructors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262343190
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/16/2017
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Srini Devadas is Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a MacVicar Fellow.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgment xi

1 You will All Conform 1

2 The Best Time to Party 13

3 You Can Read Minds (With a Little Calibration) 23

4 Keep Those Queens Apart 37

5 Please Do Break the Crystal 51

6 Find That Fake 59

7 Hip to Be a Square Root 67

8 Guess Who Isn't Coming to Dinner 77

9 Amercia's Got Talent 89

10 A Profusion of Queens 97

11 Tile That Courtyard, Please 109

12 The Towers of Brahma with a Twist 123

13 The Disorganized Handyman 135

14 You Won't Want to Play Sudoku Again 147

15 Counting the Ways you Can Count Change 161

16 Greed Is Good 169

17 Anagramania 181

18 Memory Serves You Well 193

19 A Weekend to Remember 205

20 Six Degrees of Separation 219

21 Questions Have a Price 231

Notes 251

Index 255