Book Image

40 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know

By : Imran Ahmad
5 (2)
Book Image

40 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know

5 (2)
By: Imran Ahmad

Overview of this book

Algorithms have always played an important role in both the science and practice of computing. Beyond traditional computing, the ability to use algorithms to solve real-world problems is an important skill that any developer or programmer must have. This book will help you not only to develop the skills to select and use an algorithm to solve real-world problems but also to understand how it works. You’ll start with an introduction to algorithms and discover various algorithm design techniques, before exploring how to implement different types of algorithms, such as searching and sorting, with the help of practical examples. As you advance to a more complex set of algorithms, you'll learn about linear programming, page ranking, and graphs, and even work with machine learning algorithms, understanding the math and logic behind them. Further on, case studies such as weather prediction, tweet clustering, and movie recommendation engines will show you how to apply these algorithms optimally. Finally, you’ll become well versed in techniques that enable parallel processing, giving you the ability to use these algorithms for compute-intensive tasks. By the end of this book, you'll have become adept at solving real-world computational problems by using a wide range of algorithms.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Fundamentals and Core Algorithms
7
Section 2: Machine Learning Algorithms
13
Section 3: Advanced Topics

Understanding ANNs

Inspired by the working of neurons in the human brain, the concept of neural networks was proposed by Frank Rosenblatt in 1957. To understand the architecture fully, it is helpful to briefly look at the layered structure of neurons in the human brain. (Refer to the following diagram to get an idea of how the neurons in the human brain are chained together.)

In the human brain, dendrites act as sensors that detect a signal. The signal is then passed on to an axon, which is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell. The function of the axon is to transmit this signal to muscles, glands, and other neurons. As shown in the following diagram, the signal travels through interconnecting tissue called a synapse before being passed on to other neurons. Note that through this organic pipeline, the signal keeps traveling until...