I’m excited to announce a blog post series I’ll be doing centered around algorithms and competitive programming! The series will be called “Algos in Plain English”.

Purpose

“Algos in Plain English” aims to communicate algorithms and competitive programming concepts in a digestible yet thorough format. Via plain English explanations, intuition discussion, and examples, these posts aim to be a comprehensive yet succinct way of getting an understanding of the discussed concept or algorithm. These posts will also include runnable Python code that’s well-commented and easy to understand.

Layout

These posts will have multiple parts:

1. Problem Statement
2. Alternatives (usually discussing naive approaches or data-structures)
3. Algorithm Intuition
4. High-level Algo Description
5. Code + Explanation
6. Runtime Analysis

Why?

I decided to do this series because I get a ton of value out of summarization and example-driven blog posts centered around technical topics. It strips away some of the academic formality of understanding technical topics so that the reader is able to get an intuitive understanding of the concept being discussed. Later, this makes consuming an academically rigorous specification for the algorithm or topic much easier.

Additionally, I’ve made a point to include code as part of these posts because it will ideally mimic the experience users have on sites like LeetCode, when they’re searching for an implementation that clearly lays out the algorithm that solves a given problem efficiently.

Feedback?

Do you have feedback about these posts? I’d love to hear it! The best way to contact me about these (for now) is via email: jma353 [at] cornell [dot] edu.