BBM 202 - Algorithms (Spring 2015)

Lectures: Tue 13:00-13:50@D8, Thu 09:00-10:50@D2 (Section 3)
Practicum (BBM204): Fri 13:00-14:50 @D3 (Sections 4-5)

“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And thats really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself.”
~Douglas Adams, in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Instructor: Asst. Prof. Erkut Erdem

erkut-at-cs-hacettepe.edu.tr
114
+90 312 297 7500, 149

Course Description

The subject matter of this course concerns fundamental algorithms in computer science. The course is structured around key topics including analysis of algorithms, sorting, searching, graph algorithms, string processing, dynamic programming, combinatorial search and NP-completeness.

The goal of this course is to teach student how to develop algorithms in order to solve the complex problems in the most efficient way. The students are expected to develop a foundational understanding and knowledge of key concepts that underly important algorithms in use on computers today. The students will also be expected to gain hand-on experience via a set of programming assignments supplied in the complementary BBM 204 Software Practicum.

Textbook

Algorithms, 4th Edition, R. Sedgewick and K. Wayne, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2011

Grading

60% Three Midterm Exams (12+32+16%)
40% Final Exam

Schedule (Tentative)

Week	Date	Topic	From the book	Notes
1	Feb 17	Introduction		Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Feb 19	Analysis of Algorithms	1.4	PA1 out: (pdf) Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
2	Feb 24	Elementary Sorting Algorithms	2.1	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Feb 26	Mergesort	2.2	PA2 out: (pdf) Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
3	Mar 3	Quicksort	2.3	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Mar 5	Priority Queues and Heapsort	2.4	PA1 due Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
4	Mar 10	Elementary Search Algorithms	3.1	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Mar 12	Binary Search Trees	3.2	PA2 due Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
5	Mar 17	1st Midterm Exam		Questions: (pdf)
	Mar 19	Balanced Trees	3.3	PA3 out: (pdf) Slides: (pdf, 4pp) Demos: Kd tree
6	Mar 24	Hashing, Search Applications	3.4, 3.5	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Mar 26	Undirected Graphs	4.1	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
7	Mar 31	Directed Graphs	4.2	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Apr 2	Minimum Spanning Trees	4.3	PA3 due Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
8	Apr 7	Review
	Apr 9	2nd Midterm Exam		PA4 out: (pdf) Questions: (pdf)
9	Apr 14	Shortest Path	4.4	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Apr 16	Shortest Path (cont'd), String Sorts	4.4, 5.1	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
10	Apr 21	Tries	5.2	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Apr 23	No class (National Sovereignty and Children’s Day)		PA4 due
11	Apr 28	Substring Search	5.3	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	Apr 30	Regular Expressions	5.4	PA5 out: (pdf) Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
12	May 5	3rd Midterm Exam		Questions: (pdf)
	May 7	Data Compression	5.5	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
13	May 12	Reductions	6.5	Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
	May 14	Intractability	6.6	PA5 due Slides: (pdf, 4pp)
14	May 19	No class (Commemoration of Ataturk, Youth and Sports Day)
	May 21	Advanced topics

Communication:

The course webpage will be updated regularly throughout the semester with lecture notes, programming and reading assignments and important deadlines. All other course related communications will be carried out through Piazza. Please enroll it by following the link https://piazza.com/hacettepe.edu.tr/spring2015/bbm202

Policies:

Attendance to lectures is required. You are responsible for all material presented in lecture. Some of the course material might not be covered in the textbook.

All work on assignments must be done individually unless stated otherwise. You are encouraged to discuss with your classmates about the given assignments, but these discussions should be carried out in an abstract way. That is, discussions related to a particular solution to a specific problem (either in actual code or in the pseudocode) will not be tolerated.

In short, turning in someone else’s work, in whole or in part, as your own will be considered as a violation of academic integrity. Please note that the former condition also holds for the material found on the web as everything on the web has been written by someone else.