Course Schedule
[Note: this webpage last modified Monday, 19-Aug-2013 20:41:11 EDT]
This web-page will be kept up to date with the required reading to perform before each lecture.
I will assign some readings from the textbook. You should also consider the in-class code that is typed during class as part of your assigned reading -- after class and before the next class, you should download the code, run it, and understand it fully.
Readings/Topics Schedule
I have created a google calendar for the class where I'll post readings, what we did that day, etc. - CS 458/558 calendar
I have also created a YouTube playlist where I will put videos to watch: youtube channel.
And notes from class will be kept in a google doc - class notes.
Right now, I am planning to do topics in the following rough order.
Week 0: Here are some suggestions for what you review to get ready for the course.
- The mathematical background in the appendix of the textbook. Read it and try a few of the exercises
- Review what you already know from 201, 202, 303.
- Make sure you can program in C and C++. If you aren't that good, then practice. That's what we'll be using, but I will not be teaching it - I'll assume you know it already. So, practice doing some simple programs - a hangman game, testing if a number is prime, a text search tool, etc.
Weeks 1-2: review what you already know with programming assignments, a proof or two, and maybe some variations you haven't seen before - sorting/searching, big-O and asymptotics, binary search tree, hash tables.
Weeks 1-2: introduce the ACM programming competition (see our programming contest page), work some of those problems.
Topics to cover at some point include the following
- greedy algorithms
- divide and conquer algorithms
- dynamic programming algorithms
- some other data structures besides the basic ones you already know (which include - arrays, binary search trees, hash tables)
- some graph algorithms you haven't seen
- "try all possibilities" brute-force algorithms
Topics I'd like to cover, but we'll see how many we get to...
- balanced trees
- arithmetic algorithms - addition, multiplication, modular exponentation, matrix multiplication, solving linear systems of equations
- compression/decompression
- encryption/decryption
- randomized algorithms
- approximation algorithms
- NP-complete problems
- using linear programming solvers