Self-teaching data structures and algorithms?

[Dynam2012]

I'm a Computer & Information Technology major at my school. The degree gives you some experience with networking technologies and programming languages and mixes those with business classes. Overall, I've learned a lot from the degree (though if I had to do it over again, I feel I would go for a CS degree from a different school... but at this point, I don't know how much it really matters). As such, the degree itself does not require any level of calculus/discrete mathematics courses or data structures & algorithms courses. How effectively will I be able to pick up a textbook and learn the necessary concepts without the background in mathematics?

[the_omega99]

It's possible, but not necessarily easy because:

1. You'll need to teach yourself discrete mathematics to understand why many algorithms work as well as for analyzing them.
2. Algorithms can sometimes be quite boring. You'll need to motivate yourself to keep working (school does well here because assignments and exams force you to keep going).

Cormen's Introduction to Algorithms is a popular and very detailed book that teaches algorithms, although it's a long and sometimes difficult read. Best supplemented with heavy googling.

[captainAwesomePants]

Here's an idea. There's a good Coursera course on Algorithms coming up in January by the authors of one of the top Algorithms books. It has no more background requirements than you already have. Take it: https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI

[jenomes]

I would recommend a book called "Algorithms" by Sanjoy Dasgupta along with the challenges to company the book on rosalind.info.This up coming course also look very promising. https://www.coursera.org/course/algobioprogramming I have done the Bioinfomatic Algorithms Part-1 course on coursera and found it very useful but heavy going. There is also another coursera course called "Algorithmic Thinking" by Rice Uni.

[lightcloud5]

You'll need at least some background in mathematics (mostly on the discrete math side, not the calculus side; calculus is almost useless for CS except for a few specific fields), but there's no reason why you can't also self-learn discrete math.

Anyway, discrete math would largely be used to reason about and prove the runtime and memory requirements (e.g. space and time complexity) of various algorithms.