CSC 316: SYLLABUS
Students who wish to take this course must be CSC majors who have received a grade of C- or better in both CSC 216 (Programming Concepts with JAVA) and CSC 226 (Discrete Math).
The purpose of this course is to introduce the principles and underlying concepts of algorithm design, and enhance your problem solving and software development skills. To this end, a wide range of practical techniques for manipulating data in digital computers will be presented, along with a mathematical analysis of their performance.
At the conclusion of the course you should be able to:
- complete moderately large programming projects independently, and code modules of larger projects;
- define abstract data types to subdivide a large problem into smaller, manageable subproblems;
- select for a repertory of commonly used data structures the ones most appropriate for the application at hand;
- effectively implement the abstract data types learned in class (or the ones you design yourself);
- evaluate the relative performance of alternative data structure and algorithm designs for a given problem, in terms of their asymptotic running time; and
- explain and feel confident about your approach to the solution of a given problem, and its implementation.
I encourage and expect you to participate actively in the learning process. In particular, I welcome your comments and questions as we cover material in class. One-way lectures quickly become boring, both for you and for me. By asking lots of questions your understanding of the material will be deepened significantly, and the course will be much more fun!
The course will cover a wide range of data structures and associated algorithms, including:
- Properties of programs, running time, and asymptotics
- Array and linked-memory implementations of lists, stacks, and queues
- Searching using lists, unbalanced tree structures (binary search trees, Splay trees) and balanced trees (2-3 trees, randomized binary search trees)
- Up-trees as sets with union-find operations
- Graphs and graph algorithms (traversals, shortest paths, minimum spanning trees)
- Sorting (heap sort, merge sort, insertion sort, selection sort, quick sort)
- Hash tables and hashing techniques
Students are required to purchase the following textbook:
- M. T. Goodrich, R. Tamassia, Data Structures and Algorithms in JAVA (5th edition), Wiley, 2010
The authors maintain a webpage with useful resources.
I will also make available an extensive set of lecture slides.
Students are required to complete all assignments and show all work in order to receive full credit. The final grade will be determined using the following weights:
|Four programming tasks (10% each)||
|Five homework assignments (2% each)||
|Two tests (closed book, 15% each)||
|Final exam (comprehensive, closed book)||
Attendance is not mandatory but strongly encouraged. Students are responsible for making up any course material they miss.
No hard copies of assignments or solutions will be handed out. New assignments and solutions will be announced in class and/or the course mailing list, and will be available on the course web page.
Students must submit their assignments as PDF or Word files using the submit facility. The deadline for submission is midnight (Eastern time) on the day due. Any deadline extensions are up to the discretion of the instructor, and will be announced to the whole class. Extensions may be provided to individual students under extenuating circumstances.
No late assignments will be accepted and no partial credit will be given for late assignments without a valid excuse.
Homework and projects are individual assignments and students are required to submit their own solutions. All students are bound by the University's academic integrity policies (refer to the relevant section below).
Students need to pay attention to the following important dates:
- October 18: Last day to drop the course
- December 12: Final exam
Richard Adjogah and Guoxiang Chen are the TAs for this course. The TA offices are in Rooms 1211F and 1235 of EB-II.
Richard (firstname.lastname@example.org) will hold office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4-5pm.
Guoxiang (email@example.com) will hold office hours on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11-12noon.
Alternatively, you may make an appointment with either TA outside their office hours.
My office hours in Fall 2013 will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:15-3:15 pm. My office is in Room 3278 of the EB II building.
Students are required to respect the NC State academic integrity policies.