I know its not an online course and its a relatively massive tome, but I'd recommend just working through "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen/Leiserston/Rivest/Stein [1].<p>This book has great explanations and exercises for everything you could want to learn from the basics of sorting and algorithmic design and analysis, to graph algorithms, linear programming, and dynamic programming.<p>It lacks some degree of depth on more advanced topics, but if you work your way through it and actually implement what you read and do the exercises, you will be more than well enough equipped to take on just about any problem.<p>The key is going to be to actually implement what you read/learn, I think it might take you a little more time than watching an online course, but in the long run it will give you a much deeper knowledge of the material.<p>1. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Cormen/dp/0262531968" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Corm...</a>
In addition to the Stanford courses mentioned in another comment, there are also two Princeton courses taught by Sedgewick <a href="https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~250165" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/instructor/~250165</a> and the MIT course taught by Demaine <a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/lecture-videos/" rel="nofollow">https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...</a>
Don't know about the best, but I learned a lot from these two courses.<p><a href="https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+Algorithms1+SelfPaced/about" rel="nofollow">https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+...</a><p><a href="https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+Algorithms2+SelfPaced/about" rel="nofollow">https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:Engineering+...</a>
It's not really a course but I found InterviewBit [0] a great resource. It structures everything around moving from simpler to more complex data structures and algorithms. It's kind of learning by doing lots and lots of questions. You have to complete enough problems in one section to move onto the next.<p>I spent a hundred hours going through the various tests and it showed the power of functional programming / recursion. The questions that took me much longer than average were the ones where I had a bug and had to track it down. The recursive problems didn't suffer from this, ie I would get the solution pretty much correct first time. This could just have been the questions / my programming style but I found it eye opening.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.interviewbit.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.interviewbit.com/</a>
If your eventual goal after learning the basics is programming questions for interviews, there are a tons of resources like leetcode, interviewbit, geeksforgeeks. I started writing some of the FAQ with explanations here[1], check it out to see if it is of any help for you.<p>[1] : <a href="http://letstalkalgorithms.com/" rel="nofollow">http://letstalkalgorithms.com/</a>
The best one is HSE & Yandex & Computer Science Club & UC San Diego 6 course specialization on coursera<p><a href="https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-algorithms" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-alg...</a>
The princeton one on coursera is really great and easy to read. Buy the book and take the course. Sedgewick is my hero.
It doesn't require a lot of math in contrast to the Stanford coursera one. It's much easier for the general person to follow IMO. <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1" rel="nofollow">https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1</a>
All good resources. I'd also add Algorithms, Etc.
by Jeff Erickson.<p><a href="http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/" rel="nofollow">http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/</a><p>And for practice, Google Code Jam past problems are quite challenging ;)<p><a href="https://code.google.com/codejam/" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/codejam/</a>
Is it wise to do any of these courses without taking a course in linear algebra first? I started watching Skiena's algorithm course on youtube recently and he seemed to really emphasize finishing a course in linear algebra before taking any algorithm course. Thoughts?
This is useful background: "Mathematics for Computer Science"<p><a href="https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring17/mcs.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring17/mcs.pdf</a>
The Intuitive Guide to Data Structures And Algorithms, on Interview Cake:
<a href="https://www.interviewcake.com/data-structures-and-algorithms-guide" rel="nofollow">https://www.interviewcake.com/data-structures-and-algorithms...</a><p>Disclosure: my company made this :)