Comments for Graduate Algorithms

Comment on Lecture 8: The Minimum Spanning Tree by Algorithms (F2009) » Blog Archive » Lecture 6: Minimum spanning trees.

Algorithms (F2009) » Blog Archive » Lecture 6: Minimum spanning trees. — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:09:37 +0000

[...] All you need to know, right here. [...]

Comment on Lecture 25: (Meta)-Heuristics by Algorithms (F2008) » Blog Archive » Lecture 24: Heuristics

Algorithms (F2008) » Blog Archive » Lecture 24: Heuristics — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:19:36 +0000

[...] and reading material from today’s lecture are linked here. In addition, here’s some research by Adam Teichert (thanks Adam !) on the origin of the [...]

Comment on Lecture 8: The Minimum Spanning Tree by Algorithms (F2008) » Blog Archive » Lecture 8: Minimum Spanning Trees

Algorithms (F2008) » Blog Archive » Lecture 8: Minimum Spanning Trees — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:20:29 +0000

[...] All you needed to know, right here. [...]

Comment on Some general questions. by admin

admin — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:06:37 +0000

I think there’s a fairly strong sentiment towards incorporating programming in a systematic way throughout the class, and I think the one thing I’ll try to change for next time is to throw in a reasonable programming element.

Z brought a number of interesting ACM programming competition problems to my attention, and I think that’s a good source of material. They also have a nice infrastructure for submitting and evaluating code.

Comment on Some general questions. by A. Star, M. Carlo, David N. Conquer, etc.

A. Star, M. Carlo, David N. Conquer, etc. — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 01:54:06 +0000

I’ve always really liked projects, and something team-based (maybe with presentations) would seem very beneficial for this class. That way, if some team is really interested in sorting (for a simple example) they might show the details of different sorting algorithms beyond big-oh complexity (for example often you’re given an almost sorted list so different algorithms work better with certain inputs, or for small n constants matter, etc).
I think anything that can be demoed would be cool, limiting it to web-demos only seems to knock out a lot of power that the other languages have.
As far as what we did cover, I really liked the demos shown in class (the day we were in 3147). It seemed like the randomized algorithms portion was a little rushed - I would have liked to spend more time on that, because I think it’s the part of the course I now understand the least (admittedly that might just be because I associate it with the PCP stuff).
As far as my comments as to the final…I really liked how we could answer sub problems independently (answering 1.b without answering 1.a, etc.). I didn’t like how much it differed from the homework. It seemed like the HW problems were all along the lines of “here’s a problem, what’s an algorithm that would solve it?” whereas the test had “here’s an algorithm, analyze the smeg out of it”. (I do realize that this format is what allowed the independent answering, but hey - double edged sword).
Going back to programmin’, one advantage of having programing problems for each assignment is that we’d have a better sense as to whether or not we got the question right. If questions were along the lines of “Here’s a problem, here’s what your input looks like, here’s what you output should look like, and here’re some examples, go.” (much like the ACM problems) then I think that would be cool. A problem is (and maybe (although I’m really hoping not) this is just me) whenever there’s coding involved it takes a lot longer due to debugging.

Comment on Some general questions. by admin

admin — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:56:40 +0000

Duly noted. thanks for the feedback.

Comment on Some general questions. by Back from Vegas!

Back from Vegas! — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:54:33 +0000

Prof. Suresh, one suggestion for improvement is the final exam style. This test was really gruelling. This should also have been done in the Midterm style with some choice. Also, some questions would best have been asked in assignments, where we have more time (>4 days) to think and may be learn some math, without so much heat from other exams. Hope you find this useful.

Comment on Final Exam by admin

admin — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:09:38 +0000

nope, sorry.

Comment on Final Exam by Lost in Vegas

Lost in Vegas — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:38:28 +0000

Hello Prof, I am still lost in Vegas(prob 1)! Could you make at least one question optional?

Comment on Final Exam by admin

admin — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:18:58 +0000

no no. there isn’t a compact closed form as far as I know. if you find one, more power to you. I only mentioned the lack of a closed form so people don’t go crazy trying to find one.

Here’s an example of an answer that isn’t a closed form, but it sort of what i’m talking about:

E[T] = \sum_0^N g(x)^3

It’s not a closed form soln because of the summation, but it only involves N and g(x)