For Christmas I received Algorithms to Live By written by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths.

The book title reminded me of the daunting U of T computer science course “CSC373 Algorithm Design”. Fortuantely the book covered all the fun and interesting problems we faced in that course without the many suffered hours of practice and understanding.

For a computer science grad who genuinely enjoyed undergrad it was quite a fun read. It contained a bit of history and some new topics I haven’t encountered. Overall a good read for fellow computer scientists or anyone who thinks like one.

I wouldn’t say it was a fun interesting read for every day people. The authors do a good job at slowly introducing ideas in a tangible and relatable way. However it’s not much of a self help book where you can take these ideas, apply it to your life and discover new found joy and enlightenment.

Overall a pretty good book. I agree with GoodRead’s overall rating of 4.13 stars.