[jrookie]

Yes I agree that there are algorithms that I would have never known about without hitting the books, I came across this recently. I was trying to solve one of ITA software hiring puzzles(Just for fun somebody mentioned it in SO) the "instant search" puzzle, I could never find a solution to the problem I spent days playing with it until I decided to give up, a few months later I found out about "Suffix trees" from wikipedia and found an implementation in Java, I'm still trying to understand about how it works but I used it in the ITA puzzle and the thing actually works and its freaking FAST!.

[nanijoe]

Was "not knowing" that algorithm preventing you from doing anything before you actually found it? If your goal is to learn for learning sake, then fine go buy some books and learn. If on the other hand, you are trying to build stuff, then by all means start building stuff and learn what you need along the way.

[jimbokun]

What if the goal is getting hired at ITA Software?

[kens]

Any suggestions on a book describing algorithms useful for the ITA-style problems? I looked at those problems a while back (just out of curiosity, not to get a job) and realized that I didn't really know how to solve those optimization / approximate-solution-to-NP-complete problems. Is there an AI text, maybe, that would fill this gap in my knowledge?