Are algorithms useful to learn for a non-programmer? Is there a benefit to thinking through what is presented in a book like this over solving general problems in a day-to-day context?
As a whole, I doubt a book like this would be of much use to a non-programmer. There are some high level tricks that might be fun to learn, and could be loosely applied to day-to-day thinking (should this be solved in a brute force way, or is there some shortcut). Overall the book (I assume, I haven't read it) is technical and precise solutions to technical problems.
Algorithms are just ways of solving technical problems in the most efficient way possible (for various definitions of efficiency). They are deep programming which even most programmers don't use frequently.
Sound advice. Thinking through the scope of a programming problem to come up with an algorithm sounds like a productive way of using your mind, but may be a waste of time if you don't intend on programming.
You may be interested in the book Algorithms to Live By ( Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths). I thought it was a fun-to-read book, though I don't think there was any code in the book at all.
