Fall 2024
Time and Locations
Tuesday/Thursday, 8am – 9:15am, IRB 0318
Instructor
Laxman Dhulipala (IRB 5150); Office hours TBD
Teaching Assistants
Kishen Gowda. Office hours: TBD
Sam Lee. Office hours: TBD
Richard Wen. Office hours: TBD
Zhongqi Wang. Office hours: TBD
Office hours will be held in the open work area near IRB 5136 and 5165.
You can find the calendar with the office hours timings
here,
and also find this information above.
CMSC451 is an upper-level course focused on the design and analysis of algorithms. The course presents fundamental techniques for designing efficient algorithms, proving their correctness, and analyzing their performance. Topics we will cover include:
You will also learn how to implement algorithms efficiently in practice as part of this course, using some tools from the competitive programming world.
Prerequisites: You should be comfortable with algorithm design and analysis (e.g., you should be comfortable with the material from CMSC351). Prior experience implementing some basic algorithms and data structures is helpful.
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| Aug 27 (Tu) | Introduction and Basics (Correctness, Efficiency Analysis) |
| Aug 39 (Th) | Computational Models and Lower Bounds [HW1 Out] |
| Sep 03 (Tu) | Amortized Analysis |
| Sep 05 (Th) | Amortization and Hashing |
| Sep 10 (Tu) | Perfect Hashing |
| Sep 12 (Th) | Streaming (Count-Min Sketch) |
| Sep 17 (Tu) | Graphs 1: BFS and DFS [HW1 Due, Hw2 Out] |
| Sep 19 (Th) | Divide and Conquer: Closest Pair |
| Sep 24 (Tu) | Graphs 2: DFS and SCC |
| Sep 26 (Th) | Data Structures: Range Query |
| Oct 01 (Tu) | Greedy: Interval Scheduling |
| Oct 03 (Th) | Dynamic Programming 1: Weighted Interval Scheduling, OBST [HW2 Due] |
| Oct 08 (Tu) | Dynamic Programming 2: Knapsack, LIS, Sequence Alignment [HW3 Out] |
| Oct 10 (Th) | Midterm |
| Oct 15 (Tu) | Flows 1: Ford-Fulkerson |
| Oct 17 (Th) | Flows 2: Max-Flow Min-Cut Theorem |
| Oct 22 (Tu) | Flows 3: Shortest Augmenting Paths |
| Oct 24 (Th) | Flows 4: Blocking Flows (Dinic’s) |
| Oct 29 (Tu) | LP 1: LP Basics [HW3 Due, HW4 Out] |
| Oct 31 (Th) | LP 2: Duality |
| Nov 05 (Tu) | Complexity 1: Reductions, P and NP |
| Nov 07 (Th) | Complexity 2: NP-Completeness |
| Nov 12 (Tu) | Complexity 3: NP-Completeness; Reductions |
| Nov 14 (Th) | Approximation 1: Load Balancing and k-Center |
| Nov 19 (Tu) | Approximation 2: Set Cover [HW4 Due, HW5 Out] |
| Nov 21 (Th) | Online Algorithms |
| Nov 26 (Tu) | Parallelism |
| Thanksgiving break | |
| Dec 03 (Tu) | Filter Data Structures |
| Dec 05 (Th) | Algorithms beyond 451 [HW5 Due] |
| Finals Week | Final exam (Takehome) |
Your lowest homework grade will be dropped. You can submit homeworks up to four days late, with a 5% penalty per day. Late homeworks will not be accepted beyond four days so that we can release solutions in a timely manner.
We will first assign you a numerical score [0, 1] that satisfies the following:
max {(hw x hwscore) + (midterm x midtermscore) + (final x finalscore)} such that
{0.1 <= midterm <= 0.3},
{0.1 <= hw <= 0.7},
{0.1 <= final <= 0.35}, and
{hw + midterm + final = 1}
hwscore, midtermscore, and finalscore are your raw scores for each of these categories in [0, 1]. The homework score will be computed by summing up the points and dividing by the total (and ignoring the dropped homework).
Basically we will find the best multipliers to maximize your score, subject to the constraints above and calculate your raw number grade. The cutoffs to turn this into a letter grade may then be adjusted (only more generously) to assign your final letter grade.
Any student eligible for and requesting reasonable academic accommodations due to a disability is requested to provide, to the instructor in office hours, a letter of accommodation from the Office of Disability Support Services (DSS) within the first two weeks of the semester.
Your education is very important to us, and we respect each of you regardless of how you do in the class. Our expectations of you are that you attend class and pay full attention, and give enough time to the course. We strongly encourage you to ask questions in class, and to come to the office hours (the instructors’ or the TAs’) with any further questions. We can have a very enjoyable educational experience if you pay attention in class, give sufficient time to our course, and bring any difficulties you have promptly to our attention. We look forward to our interaction both inside and outside the classroom.