[musicale]

Hahaha that is a great story. Though it does seem like teaching and advising are different skills and one can be good at one but not the other.

I have been watching Steven Skiena's lectures and reading his book, and I like both of them, but the lectures most of all because of his relaxed and practical approach. Skiena himself says that CLRS is a "better" book than his (and also more up to date) but I like the Skiena learning curve better.

In contrast, Tim Roughgarden's lectures and books are more mathematical, but his proofs seem reasonably well-motivated and clearly explained to me at least.

I also like how both of these guys point out that coming up with new algorithms or proofs from scratch is incredibly hard and you shouldn't expect (yourself or anyone) to be able to do so quickly or on the fly. Success with algorithm puzzle exams, algorithm puzzle "programming" contests, and algorithm puzzle "technical" interviews is largely based on familiarity with a large body of pre-existing algorithms and data structures and experience applying them to a wide range of problems. That sort of knowledge and experience greatly improves your odds of guessing the (often sneaky and non-obvious) trick required to solve a particular, usually weirdly stated, algorithm puzzle.