CSCI 1570 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms

CSCI 1570 - Design and Analysis of Algorithm Instructors:  Claire Mathieu (claire at cs.brown.edu), CIT 555, x36066. TAs TBA.
Lecture Location and Time:  T,Th 10:30-11:50am, room TBA
Office hours:  TBA.

A single algorithmic improvement can have a greater impact on our ability to solve a problem than ten years of incremental improvements in CPU speed. In CS157, we study techniques for designing and analyzing algorithms.

  • What is CS157 all about? We study algorithms and data structures for a wide variety of problems in Computer Science.
  • Why study algorithms? The goal is to build a deep(er) understanding of fundamental algorithmic paradigms such as Divide and Conquer, Dynamic Programming, Greedy Approaches, and Approximation.
  • How are we going to do that? We emphasize rigor in our proofs of correctness and runtime.
  • Are there any prerequisites? The prerequisites are: ((CS16 or CS18) and CS22) (or equivalent).

    New textbook! Algorithms by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou and Umesh Vazirani, McGraw Hill 2008, ISBN 978-0-07-352340-8. Copies have been ordered at the Brown bookstore. (Alternatively, students may try the following website, created by a Brown student, that supposedly makes it easy to search Amazon, Half.com, and Abebooks.com to find the lowest prices for textbooks.)

    Assignments

    Homeworks, Midterm, Final.
    Assignment Date out Date due Solution



    Spring 2009 Schedule

    Date Topic
    		 Book chapter
    Th, Jan 22
    		 Introduction
    		 ch. 0