Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms

Computer Science 482
Spring 2005

Announcements

• Review Problems for the Final Exam are now online.
• HW10 is now available for pickup in Upson 363C.
• The CS482 Final Exam takes place 9:00-11:30am on Friday, May 20, in Olin 155 (the same room our other exams have been in).
• Office hours will continue as usual up until the Final Exam.  Any necessary changes (due to a TA having a final exam, for instance) will be posted here as soon as the information is available.
• The Schedule has been updated to show all the lecture topics and the corresponding sections in the text for the entire semester.
• Link to old Announcements...

Staff and Office Hours

• Add cornell.edu to any incomplete email addresses below.

CS 482 STAFF	Name	Email	Office
Instructor	Paul Chew	chew@cs.cornell.edu	494 Rhodes
TAs	Alan Cheng	akc25@
	Tom Church	tfc23@
	Anirban DasGupta	adg@cs.
	Eric Holmberg-Weidler	ejh26@
	Hari Nathan	hsn4@
	Samuel Krasnik	smk72@
	Joel Ossher	jpo5@
	Thanh Nguyen	thanh@cs.
	Jeffery Zhang	jz87@

• Office hours will be listed below. You can also use any of the communication methods suggested below.

Office/Consulting Hours	Where	Who
Monday, 2:30 - 3:30	328 Upson	Jeffery Zhang
Tuesday, 12:00 - 1:00	328 Upson	Hari Nathan
Tuesday, 3:00 - 4:00	494 Rhodes	Paul Chew
Wednesday, 10:00 - 11:00	328 Upson	Eric Holmberg-Weidler
Wednesday, 1:30 - 2:30	328 Upson	Thanh Nguyen
Wednesday, 3:00 - 4:00	328 Upson	Anirban DasGupta
Thursday, 1:30 - 2:30	328 Upson	Alan Cheng
Thursday, 2:30 - 3:30	328 Upson	Tom Church
Thursday, 3:30 - 4:30	328 Upson	Samuel Krasnik
Thursday, 4:30 - 5:30	328 Upson	Joel Ossher

Communication

• Course Web Site: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs482/2005sp/
  Check the website often.  This is the central repository for all the information available about the course including the latest homework assignment, scheduling changes, and important announcements.
• Course Newsgroup: cornell.class.cs482
  This group is monitored by the course staff and is intended for both questions and discussion.  This is likely to be the quickest way to get a question answered.  Please do not post homework solutions or partial solutions.
• Office Hours: Hours will be announced in class and posted on the course web site as soon as they are determined.
• Email: Questions about the course can be emailed to any of the course staff.
• Appointments: You can make an appointment with any member of the course staff. The best way to set up an appointment is via email.

Homework

• There will be weekly problem sets, due in class (usually) on Friday.
• Late Homework Policy: It is expected that homework will be turned in in class and on time. Late homework will not be be accepted except in emergency situations.  If a genuine emergency situation exists you must inform the course staff as soon as possible.
• Submitting Homework: To simplify the process of distributing papers for grading, each homework will consist of 3 parts (A, B, and C).  Each part must be turned in separately.  In other words, each of parts A, B, and C will be placed in separate piles when homework is handed in on Friday.
• Returning Homework: Homework will be returned in class, usually on Wednesday. Any homework not picked up in class is delivered to Upson 363C where it can be picked up 10:00-12:00 and 2:00-4:00, Monday through Friday.
• Homework Privacy: Normally, graded homework is handed back in a self-service stack.  In other words, your homework grade is not private. If you prefer more privacy, clearly mark HOLD at the top of the first page of each piece (A, B, and C) of your homework; I will hold these papers for pick-up during my office hours.
• Warning: It is unlikely that you will learn the material in the course unless you do the homework. Those who skip a significant number of them are likely to earn poor grades on the exams (as well as receiving a low homework grade).

Homework	Topic	Due Date
HW1	Stable Matching + Review	Friday, Feb 4
HW2	Greedy Algorithms	Friday, Feb 11
HW3	Divide & Conquer; Dynamic Programming	Friday, Feb 18
HW4	Network Flow	Friday, Mar 4
HW5	More Network Flow	Friday, Mar 11
HW6	NP-Completeness	Friday, Apr 1
HW7	More NP-Completeness	Friday, Apr 8
HW8	Solving/Approximating NP-Complete Problems	Friday, Apr 22
HW9	Approximating NP-Complete Problems	Friday, Apr 29
HW10	Randomized Algorithms	Friday, May 6 (but OK if in by noon on Tuesday, May 10)

Grading

• Your course grade will be based on homework (due each Friday), two prelims, and a final exam. Weighting will be roughly as follows:
  • 30% homework
  • 40% prelims (20% each)
  • 30% final exam
• Grading Criteria: For the most part, you will be asked 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.
• CMS: We are using the CS course management system at https://cms2.csuglab.cornell.edu/ to manage course grades. Please check your grades regularly to make sure we are recording things properly. The system also provides some grading statistics.
• Regrade Policy: Regrade requests must be made within one week of the time that homework or exams are returned to the class.  It's not fair to the graders to ask them to explain details of their grading scheme for an assignment from several weeks ago.  Also, this rule prevents a pileup of such requests at the end of the semester.
• Regrade Process: If you believe your solution to a question was correct and it was marked incorrect then you should write up an explanation of the grading error, attach it to your homework, and bring it to the TA who graded the question. Alternately, you can leave the homework and written explanation with the instructor. Note that we're talking here about correct algorithms that were treated as incorrect; in general, we will not look at regrade requests that are simply arguing about the amount of partial credit assigned. Regrade requests will be handled periodically in batch mode rather than on-the-spot.

Academic Integrity

• Any violation of academic integrity will be severely penalized. You are allowed to collaborate on the homework to the extent of formulating ideas as a group. However, you are expected to write up (and understand) the homework on your own.
• Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity: http://www.cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html

Basic Course Data

• Time and Place: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 9:05 to 9:55 in Olin 255

• Course Description (from the Catalog): Techniques used in the creation and analysis of algorithms. Combinatorial algorithms, computational complexity, NP-completeness, and intractable problems.

Prerequisites

• We will assume that everyone has seen the material in CS 211, 312, 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 the text.
• The lectures and homework involve the analysis of algorithms at a fairly mathematical level. We expect everyone to be comfortable reading and writing proofs at the level of 280 and 381/481.

Text

• Algorithm Design by Jon Kleinberg and Eva Tardos.  This text is not yet published so we will be using copies printed by the Campus Store.  Copies from earlier semesters should be all right to use, but you should be aware that chapter numbers and exercise numbers have changed.
• Note that, although this book was designed for this course, there will be topics covered in lecture that are not in the text and there will be topics in the text that are not covered in lecture.  You are responsible for topics covered in lecture and for any assigned reading in the text.
• The following are also useful references.
  • T. Cormen, C. Leiserson, R. Rivest. Introduction to Algorithms. 
  • A. Aho, J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman. The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms. 
  • G. Brassard, P. Bratley. Fundamentals of Algorithmics. 
  • M. Garey and D. Johnson. Computers and Intractability . 
  • D. Kozen. The Design and Analysis of Algorithms.

Schedule

• The Schedule lists topics covered in lecture and the corresponding chapters in the text. It includes some prediction of future lectures. This will be updated periodically during the semester.

Items Placed on the Web

• Review Problems for the Final Exam - CS482
• HW10 - CS482
• HW9 - CS482
• HW8 - CS482
• Review Problems for Prelim Two - CS482
• HW7 - CS482
• HW6 - CS482
• HW5 - CS482
• HW4 - CS482
• Review Problems for Prelim One - CS482
• HW3 - CS482
• HW2 - CS482
• HW1 - CS482
• Schedule - CS 482
• The most recent items are listed first