Course Outline

-- Subject to change without notice --

• Week 1. January 11, 1998.
  • Administrivia.
  • Asymptotic notation. Solving recurrences, including the Master Theorem and its proof.
  • Quiz reviewing undergrad algorithms
  • Problem Set 1 given out.
• Week 2
  • Problem set 1 due.
  • Binary search trees (review). Red-black trees.
  • Augmenting data structures
  • Amortized analysis. Splay trees.
• Week 3.
  • Hashing. Universal hash functions.
  • Binomial heaps.
• Week 4.
  • Fibonacci heaps/trees.
  • Skip lists.
• Week 5.
  • Union-find log star bound.
  • Start network flow.
• Week 6: Network flow
• Week 7: May still need to finish network flow, and highly tentative date for midterm.
• Week 8.
  • FFT and Polynomial Operations.
  • Start computational geometry.
• Week 9. Computational Geometry. Convex Hulls.
• Week 10.
  • Arithmetic circuits: addition, parallel prefix, multiplication.
  • Algorithms for parallel computers: lists and trees, pointer jumping, Euler tour technique.
• Week 11. Number theoretic algorithms: GCD, modular exponentiation, primality testing.
• Week 12. Approximation Algorithms.
• Week 13. Machine learning algorithms.

The more mathematical among you will note that we have only thirteen weeks of outline, and fifteen weeks of classes.

There are two reasons for this discrepancy: First, I'm probably being too optimistic about how quickly material can be covered, and second, I then have several months of assorted advanced topics that I also want to cover.

I may well change the topics based on what material the class has seen in the past.