First Course in Algorithms Through Puzzles

Ryuhei Uehara is a professor in the School of Information Science at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He was a researcher at CANON Inc. Later, he joined Tokyo Woman's Christian University as an assistant professor and was later also a lecturer and associate professor at Komazawa University. He had been a visiting scholar at the University of Waterloo (Canada), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Simon Fraser University (Canada), the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), ETH  Zürich (Switzerland), and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain).  His research interests include computational complexity, algorithms and data structures, and graph algorithms. He is especially engrossed in computational origami, games, and puzzles from the viewpoints of theoretical computer science. He is one of two translators of the New Martin Gardner Mathematical Library into Japanese.

• Chapter 1. Preliminaries.- Chapter 2. Recursive call.- Chapter 3. Algorithms for Searching and Sorting.- Chapter 4. Searching on graphs.- Chapter 5. Backtracking.- Chapter 6. Randomized Algorithms.- Chapter 7. References.- Chapter 8. Answers to exercises.

“Uehara’s First course in algorithms through puzzles is an immensely gratifying book to read. It is a neat and short introduction to algorithms, which manages to combine fun with depth. … This reviewer is thinking of employing Uehara's book as recommended reading.” (Michael Soltys, Mathematical Reviews, May, 2020)“This is a first course in computer-science algorithms, aimed at undergraduates.  … The puzzle parts are the best part of the book. They are concrete, well-explained, and well-motivated, as well as being rigorous computer science.” (Allen Stenger, MAA Reviews, April 22, 2019)