UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCES

CISC 320
Introduction to Algorithms

MWF 11:15AM-12:05PM
115 Gore
Home Page Fall 2001
The URL for this page is http://udel.edu/~caviness/cisc320-01F-homepage.html
(Note that all the letters in the URL are lower case except the F in 01F)

Syllabus

Lectures

Examples

Exercise Solns

This is the home page for the University of Delaware course CISC 320 - Introduction to Algorithms taught by Prof. B. F. Caviness in the Fall of 2001.

In the Beginning ...

"More than sixty years ago, mathematical logicians, by defining precisely the concept of an algorithm, gave content to the ancient human idea of effective calculation. Their definitions led to the creation of the digital computer, an interesting example of thought bending matter to its ends.
...
Having coaxed the concept of algorithm into self-consciousness, the logicians have made possible the creation of algorithms of matchless power, elegance, concision, and reliability."
--- from D. Berlinski, The Advent of the Algorithm, 2000.

"A good algorithm can--and every computer practitioner has seen this--shorten the time it takes to solve a problem from days to seconds."
--- from D. Shasha & C. Lazere, Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists

The computing project for the course is 2014. This is for use of the composer machines, especially strauss.
The syllabus gives an overview of the course including the textbooks to be used and a tentative course schedule.

Textbook
1. Required: Michael T. Goodrich & Roberto Tamassia, Algorithm Design: Foundations, Analysis, and Internet Examples, John Wiley, ISBN: 0-471-80141-7.
  John Wiley also has a web page for this text.
  This new book will not be available until October. The publisher, John Wiley, is providing copies of the first few chapters to use until the final published version is ready. Copies will be distributed in the first class.

Browsers and Plug-ins
- For this course you need to have access to a computer with either a Netscape 4.x (or later) or Internet Explorer 4.x (or later) browser, but probably not IE 6 since it does not support plug-ins. The browser should be set so that both JavaScript and Java are enabled. The browser needs to be supplemented with certain plug-ins to facilitate reading of online material that contains mathematical equations.
- For this purpose, you should have available the IBM techexplorer plug-in ( download).
  techexplorer will work with both Netscape and IE. If you have both browsers installed on your machine, follow the instructions for installing the plug-in for Netscape and it will automatically be installed for IE as well. techexplorer comes in two editions for Windows and the Macintosh - an introductory edition which is free and will be mostly sufficient for this course although you will not be able to print material that is displayed by the plug-in (under Unix the free intro edition is the only one available).
  For Windows and the Mac there is a professional edition available for $29 that does have some print capability.
  Here is a test document on which to try the techexplorer plug-in.
- You will also want to have available a reader for pdf files. We will use these as an alternative way of displaying and printing mathematical material. A pdf reader is already available on the composers. It is invoked with the Unix command "acroread".
  A free reader and printer for pdf files can be found at the Adobe web site. On my Windows machine, the reader is automatically called by the browser and displays the pdf in the browser window which is nice. On the composers (strauss, copland), clicking on a pdf file causes it to be downloaded into your file system (a download window pops up that allows you to indicate the directory in which you wish to have the pdf file copied). You then must use the Unix command "acroread filename.pdf" to view or print the file. Since most students have limited disk space on the composers, you may have to delete these files after viewing/printing them. Also, the pdf files are much larger than the tex files that techexplorer uses so if you are downloading the pdf files over a dial-up modem, it may take a while.

Lecture notes
For each class lecture notes will be provided that include the assignment for that class, important announcements (if there are any), solutions to previously assigned exercises, and an outline of the lecture. The outline normally contains a list of all topics to be covered(sometimes with additional details) and examples to be discussed. These documents will be made available as they are completed. Normally this will be shortly before the lecture.
Examples
This is a directory of the examples discussed in lecture.

Solutions to homework exercises
Solutions to many of the daily homework exercises will appear in this directory.

Online course grades will be available at a later date. To view your grades, after getting the CIS320> prompt do

CIS320> mygrades

This should display your grades and an approximation to your current average. If you think that a grade is incorrectly recorded, please check with the TA. An announcement will be made when this feature is available.

Instructor:	B. F. Caviness
Contact Info:	Office: 406 Smith Hall	Phone: 831-8234	email: `caviness@cis.udel.edu`
Office Hours:	Weds 1:30-3PM & by appt
Teaching Assistant:	Ozcan Koc
Contact Info:	Office: 51 E. Main St., Rm 005	Phone: 831-6635	email: `koc@cis.udel.edu`
Office Hours:	Mons 9-11AM

--> Last updated 10AM Tues, Sept 4, 2001.

This page has been accessed more than 10 times since 7 Aug 2001.

Corrections, suggestions and comments tocaviness@cis.udel.edu

CISC 320 Introduction to Algorithms

In the Beginning ...

CISC 320
Introduction to Algorithms