Really confused about book errata

#1

Hi, I think I found a problem in 1.5.7. Problem 1.8 (THE 3-SUM PROBLEM) states that for input <2, 3, 5, 7, 11> there is no combination of elements (not necessarily distinct) that sum to 9. Obviously <3, 3, 3> sum to 9. Am I missing something?

Also, I am getting increasingly boondoggled with finding acknowledged mistakes in the book. It seems that errata is labeled “bugs” on the main page, which is fine, except that the wording indicates it is a list of “fixed” “bugs” rather than all misprints. Is there a separate list of “bugs” that haven’t been fixed yet?

More significantly, to understand the list/spreadsheet, you have to cross-reference with four tables of contents. Is there a reason you don’t group your errata by problem name?

The icing on the cake is that I am using printing 1.5.7, which I can’t find a reference to anywhere. Is it equivalent to one of {1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3}? Or is it completely different and the spreadsheet and cross-reference have not been updated yet?

Sorry for the rant, but I keep getting derailed in my study plan every time I try to figure out if there is a misprint in the book or if I am just misunderstanding the text.

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#2

Hey Nick,

You are right about the 3-sum problem one where 9 is possible.

About the errata, I think it is a little out of sync since we changed many things version over version. You are right that there are huge difference between any two major revisions. The reason we don’t use problem name is because we actually change the problem names sometimes so we cannot do that.

I am sorry for your frustration, and please feel free to ask your questions if you encounter and that is the reason we have this forum where authors and many others could help you out.

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#3

That’s ok, hopefully my comments will result in a better experience for future readers. Simply acknowledging the existence of other book versions in your top-level “bugs” page and in the cross-reference document would be a good start. I saw you did speak to that somewhere in the forum, but by the time a reader finds that it’s maybe too late.

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#4

Hey Nick,

I think there is no bad comments in the forum since I strongly believe that your problem might be someone else. Over these years, we tried very hard to fix those bugs and now is converging to a point only typos and rarely we found bugs. We thought bugs are very serious issues since we don’t want to teach you something wrong which might eventually kills you.

Again, thanks for your comments and we do appreciate that.

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