From your first loop to the research frontier
Follow the line: each station is a chapter, each color a level. It runs through the textbook core and the senior patterns, and ends at Chapter 18, the Frontier. The ring around a station fills as you solve its Practice Arena problems. Tap a station to see what's inside and where to start.
What each level unlocks
Levels group the Arena problems by difficulty. Finish a level and you can do what its card says — honestly, not just on paper.
How to walk the line
1 · Chapters 0–2 first, always
Chapter 2 is the measuring tape for everything after it. Come back to it whenever a new sum or recurrence appears — the cheat sheet keeps the formulas in one place.
2 · Strategies in textbook order
Chapters 3–10 each add one design strategy. Each one reuses the one before it (divide-and-conquer needs recursion; dynamic programming fixes divide-and-conquer's repeats), so resist skipping.
3 · Beyond, in any order
After Chapter 12, Chapters 13–17 are independent. Pick by goal: interviews → 15, systems work → 13 and 16, graph-heavy work → 14. Finish with 17, the playbook.
4 · The Frontier, as a finale
Chapter 18 is optional and builds on everything before it: each section starts from a classic you already know (mergesort, hashing, binary search trees, scans) and shows what modern libraries and recent papers changed. Trace any idea further in the Algorithm Atlas.
A 12-week study plan
One chapter of Levitin per week, in chapter order, at about 6–8 hours a week, with Checkpoint A (a timed practice exam) after Chapter 5 and Checkpoint B after Chapter 12. It is a suggested pace: go faster or slower as you like. Chapters 13–17 follow at your own pace, and the Frontier (Chapter 18) is the optional finale.