CMSC 641 Design & Analysis of Algorithms, Spring 2010

News Archive

• [Thu May 13 08:55 2010]
  Grades on Blackboard have been updated through Quiz 5 and Homework 11. The only missing grades are the final exam and Homework 12, worth 26% and 3.25% of your grade respectively. So, the total number of obtainable points is 70.75. Thus, 90% of points so far is 63.675 points, 80% is 56.6 points and 70% is 49.525.

• [Wed May 12 08:40 2010]
  Here's a Java applet that animates Fortune's plane sweep algorithm for Voronoi diagrams: http://www.diku.dk/hjemmesider/studerende/duff/Fortune/.

• [Thu May 06 12:30 2010]
  Dave Mount (at UMCP) has some nice lecture notes on Computational Geometry, including a section on Voronoi diagrams (which isn't in our textbook): link.

• [Tue May 04 09:55 2010]
  Homework 12 posted. Note: the due date for Homework 12 has been pushed back to Thursday, May 13th.

• [Tue Apr 27 01:05 2010]
  Homework 11 posted.

• [Tue Apr 27 01:05 2010]
  Here's the paper for next week's lecture on parallel merge sort in O(log n) time on a PRAM model. (The full paper is available if you are on the UMBC network or use Web VPN.)

  • Richard Cole, "Parallel Merge Sort," SIAM Journal on Computing, 17(4):770–785, 1988.
    DOI="10.1137/0217049" [link]

• [Thu Apr 22 11:53 2010]
  You can read up on randomized rounding for MAXSAT in Randomized Algorithms by Rajeev Motwani and Prabhakar Raghavan (check if these pages are available to you in Google Books) or in these lecture notes by David Williamson:

  http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr03/cs594/dpw/lecture3.ps.

  Here's a local copy in PDF: David-Williamson-MaxSat.pdf. (Sections 1.1, 1.4 and 1.5 are the relevant sections.)

• [Mon Apr 19 10:35 2010]
  Updated syllabus to show slippage in the lecture schedule.

• [Mon Apr 19 10:10 2010]
  Homework 10 posted.

• [Sat Apr 17 16:54 2010]
  For the lectures on randomized algorithms, we will follow the presentation in Kleinberg and Tardos's Algorithm Design (Pearson Education, 2006). Chapter 13 "Randomized Algorithms" is available in PDF on the publisher's website as a sample chapter: http://www.aw-bc.com/info/kleinberg/chapter.html.

  Here's a local copy: Kleinberg-Tardos-ch13.pdf.

• [Tue Apr 13 12:40 2010]
  Homework 9 posted.

• [Tue Apr 06 12:50 2010]
  Here is a link to the paper "A simple on-line bin-packing algorithm" by C. C. Lee and D. T. Lee from the Journal of the ACM: link. The Big-Medium-Small approximation algorithm for Bin Packing is a simplified version of the algorithm in this paper. You should be able to download the full text of this paper when you are connected thru the UMBC network.

• [Tue Apr 06 11:40 2010]
  Homework 8 posted.

• [Mon Apr 05 23:36 2010]
  Fixed a couple of typos on the 5-vertex example for Question #3 of Homework 7: CMSC641-hw7-3ex.jpg. (Not that this was done in time to help anyone.)

• [Wed Mar 31 15:30 2010]
  Posted 5-vertex example for Question #3 of Homework 7: CMSC641-hw7-3ex.jpg.

• [Tue Mar 30 08:10 2010]
  Homework 7 posted.

• [Tue Mar 23 07:25 2010]
  Homework 6 posted.

• [Tue Mar 09 11:50 2010]
  Homework 5 posted.

• [Tue Mar 02 00:35 2010]
  Homework 4 posted.

• [Tue Feb 23 11:50 2010]
  Homework 3 posted.

• [Thu Feb 18 00:15 2010]
  Our TA, Elko Tchernev, will hold office hours on Mondays 1pm – 2pm and Wednesdays 7pm – 8pm in ITE 334.

• [Mon Feb 15 09:35 2010]
  Fixed typo in Homework 2. The third question is Chapter 21, not Chapter 12.

• [Fri Feb 12 09:48 2010]
  The syllabus has been updated to show the campus closures this week. Hope things return to "normal" next week.

• [Mon Feb 08 21:35 2010]
  No class Tuesday, February 9^th since campus is closed due to the record snowfall. Please turn in Homework 1 at our next meeting, whenever that might be.

  In the meantime, for those of you who have some extra time (perhaps you don't have to shovel), Homework 2 has been posted. We will push back the due date of Homework 2 (and of succeeding homework assignments) by one week and cancel Homework 13.

• [Mon Feb 08 11:20 2010]
  For those who like to read ahead, here are some notes I will follow for the lecture on Disjoint Sets: dsu.pdf.

• [Mon Feb 08 10:45 2010]
  Homework 2 posted.

• [Tue Feb 02 15:40 2010]
  Here are the dynamic programming problems we went over in today's lecture: Dynamic Programming Trick or Treat and SingleToy.com.

• [Mon Feb 01 22:10 2010]
  Homework 1 posted.

• [Sat Jan 23 11:55 2010]
  The first quiz is on Thursday, February 25. Mark your calendars with the dates of the in-class quizzes from the syllabus!

• [Sat Jan 23 11:55 2010]
  The course description and syllabus are available in PDF: description.pdf, syllabus.pdf. Hard copies will be distributed on the first day of class.

• [Sat Jan 23 11:55 2010]
  Web page up.