CAS 702: Data Structures & Algorithms
Instructor:   George Karakostas
Lectures:   Tue, Thu 2:00-3:30 PM. All lectures in person in ITB/222. 
Office hours:  By appointment
Textbook:  "Introduction to Algorithms", 3rd Ed., by T. Cormen, C. Leiserson, R. Rivest, and C. Stein.
Study material:
Course description:  

The course will cover data structures and algorithms topics at a graduate level. This means that this course will not be a repetition of an undergraduate course on the subject, such as, e.g., CAS CS 2C03, but it will rather cover more advanced topics, or known material at a more advanced /deeper level of understanding. For example, Kruskal's algorithm for the minimum spanning tree problem should already be known, but we will examine it under a general framework for greedy algorithms called matroid theory. Therefore it is assumed that the students already know the material of Chapters 1-5 (Foundations) of the text (note: students who are not familiar with this material must cover it as soon as possible).
A tentative list of topics we will try to cover follows.
Topics
  1. Binomial heaps, an example of worst-case analysis (Problem 19-2)
  2. Amortized analysis (Ch. 17)
  3. Fibonacci heaps, an example of amortized analysis (Ch. 19)
  4. Hash tables, an example of randomized analysis (Ch. 11)
  5. Greedy algorithms and matroids (Ch. 16)
  6. Dynamic programming and all-pairs shortest paths (Ch. 15, 25)  slides
  7. Maximum flow (Ch. 26)
  8. Linear Programming and Duality (Ch. 29)
  9. Primal-Dual schema as an algorithmic design tool
  10.  NP-completeness (Ch. 34)
  11. Approximation algorithms (Ch. 35)


Student evaluation:
50% Midterm exam  (Monday 17/10, 4:00-7:00 pm (3 hours), open textbook, topics 1-5 above)
50% Final exam   (Tuesday 13/12, 2:00-5:00 pm (3 hours), open textbook, topics 1-11 above)
Problem sets
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