Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms

Computer Science 482
Spring 2002

Problem set 10 has been graded. It can be picked up from Esha Mollette in 4119 Upson Hall.

You may look at the your graded final by asking Esha Mollette in 4119 Upson Hall. You may not keep the final. 

Basic Info:

• Time: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:05-9:55 am.
• Place: Olin 155.

Staff

• Instructors:
  • Jon Kleinberg, 5134 Upson Hall, 255-3600. email: kleinber@cs.cornell.edu
  • Éva Tardos 4126 Upson hall, 255-0984. email eva@cs.cornell.edu
• Teaching Assistants:
  • Siddharth Alexander,  657 Rhodes Hall, phone: 255-4195, email: alexande@cam.cornell.edu.
  • Alexei Kopylov,  4139 Upson Hall, phone: 255-4934, email: kopylov@cs.cornell.edu
  • Nadya Travinin, email: nt32@cornell.edu 
  • Misha Zatsman, email mz36@cornell.edu
  • David Richardson, email  dwr5@cornell.edu
  • John Bicket, email jcb35@cornell.edu
  • Bill McCloskey, email: btm2@cornell.edu
  • Serguei Vassilvitskii, email sv39@cornell.edu

• Support Staff: Esha Molette, 4119 Upson, 254-8948, email: esha@cs.cornell.edu .

Getting in touch with us

Office Hours   for the week of the final 

Handouts

Extra copies of handouts will be kept in 303 Upson, and on the racks outside. 

Let us know if you find typographical errors in the course packet. We'll post here the ones we know about.

Approximate Syllabus.

Please fill out this information sheet.

Some Thoughts on 482 Homework. 

Books

We will be using a draft of a book by Jon Kleinberg and Eva Tardos, which we developed while teaching the last few years of CS 482. It is available at the Campus Store.

Although the book is organized around the structure of the course, we will still cover things in lecture that are not written down there; there are also things in the book that we will not cover. The content of the lectures forms the material that you are responsible for knowing in the course.

The following useful books are on  reserve in the Engineering Library:

• T. Cormen, C. Leiserson, R. Rivest. Introduction to Algorithms. McGraw-Hill, 1990.
• A. Aho, J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman. The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms. Addison-Wesley, 1974.
• G. Brassard, P. Bratley. Fundamentals of Algorithmics. Prentice-Hall, 1996.
• M. Garey and D. Johnson. Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. W.H. Freeman, 1979.
• D. Kozen. The Design and Analysis of Algorithms. Springer-Verlag, 1992.

Prerequisites

• We will assume that everyone has seen the material in CS 211/212 and 280, and we will use it as necessary in 482. This includes elementary data structures, sorting, and basic terminology involving graphs (including the concepts of depth-first search and breadth-first search). Some of these are reviewed in Chapter 2 of the course packet.
• From 381/481, we mainly expect you to be familiar with the Turing machine model.
• The lectures and homework will involve the analysis of algorithms at a fairly mathematical level. We expect everyone to be comfortable with reading and writing mathematical proofs, at the level of CS 280 and 381/481.

Prelims and Final

• Prelim 1: Thursday, February 21st at 7:30 pm.
• Prelim 2: Tuesday, April 9th at 7:30 pm.
• Final: Thursday, May 9th, 12-2:30 pm.

Homework

There will be weekly homework sets, generally due on Fridays. Homework should be handed in, in lecture, at the end of class, on the day it is due.

• Late homeworks will not receive credit. (If a genuine emergency situation prevents you from handing in an assignment on time, come talk to one of us and we can work something out.)
• Most homework will consist of written questions asking you to design algorithms for various problems. (There will not be any programming assignments.) A complete answer consists of a clear description of an algorithm (an English description is fine), followed by an analysis of its running time and a proof that it works correctly. You should try to make your algorithms as efficient as possible.

Academic Integrity

You are expected to maintain the utmost level of academic integrity in the course. Any violation of the code of academic integrity will be penalized severely.

You are allowed to collaborate on the homework to the extent of formulating ideas as a group. However, you must write up the solutions to each problem set completely on your own. You must also list the names of everyone that you discussed the problem set with.