Why are we here? #
Practical
- You’re going to write code to solve problems.
- Is there an easy, efficient algorithm.
- Is it basically impossible?
- Is is it possible but worth optimizing?
Curriculum
- You’re taking Comp Theory next. This does set up for that.
Future Study
- If you end up in a grad school Algo course, you should be prepared.
- If you’re personally trying to figure something out and you end up finding a graph algorithm or a reduction, you’ll have some idea what’s going on.
What’s going to be on the exam? #
- Determine algorithm complexity
- Recursion Trees
- General Inductive Arguments
- Proofs
- Greedy by contradiction
- General Inductive Arguments
- Graphs, Graph Algorithms
- Depth First, Breadth First, Best-First
- Directed vs. Undirected, Weighted vs. Unweighted
- NP Reductions
- Be comfortable with the 3-SAT to 3-color reduction.
- Be comfortable with the 3-SAT to Maximum Independent Set reduction.
- Be comfortable with the MIS to MaxClique and MinVertexCover reductions.
