Algorithms TTIC 31010

Winter Quarter 2014

Instructor: Yury Makarychev
Lectures: Tuesday & Thursdays, 10:20-11:40, TTIC, room 530
Office hours: after the class on Thursdays or by appointment (please email me).
Mailing list: algorithms-class-winter-2014@ttic.edu . Follow this link https://groups.google.com/a/ttic.edu/group/algorithms-class-winter-2014/subscribe to subscribe to the course mailing list.

Note: the class will be from 9:40am to 11:00am on Thursday, February 13.

Description

This is a graduate level course on algorithms, with the emphasis on computational problems that are central to both theory and practice, and on developing techniques for the design and the rigorous analysis of algorithms and data structures for such problems.

Topics

Greedy algorithms
Dynamic programming
Amortized analysis
Maximum flow, minimum cut
Linear Programming
Randomized algorithms and probabilistic analysis
NP-hardness
Approximation algorithms
Advanced data structures

Textbook

The main course textbook is is Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos. However, not all the course material is covered by the book.

Prerequisites

We assume that the students are familiar with the following topics, usually covered in undergraduate algorithms courses: time and memory complexity analysis, sorting, basic data structures (linked lists, trees, balanced trees, heaps), algorithmic paradigms (greedy algorithms, divide and conquer techniques), basic graph and network algorithms (BFS, DFS, MST, shortest path algorithms, max flow).

Requirements

There will be 4 closed-book quizzes, and one final exam. Grades are based on the final exam (40%) and quizzes (60%). Only the best 3 out of 4 quizzes will count towards the grade. Quiz dates tentatively are:

January 28
February 11
February 25
March 11

We will distribute sets of practice problems that will help you to prepare to quizzes. Solving them is strongly recommended.