Course syllabus

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TIN093/DIT093, Period 3, 2025: Algorithms

Instructor

  • Peter Damaschke , ptr(at)chalmers.se, EDIT 5480, is instructor and examiner in this period.
  • Birgit Grohe, birgit.grohe(at)cse.gu.se, EDIT 5483, is examiner for the same course in period 1.

For contact, please use ordinary email, no canvas massages.

Assistants

Email: add "(at)chalmers.se", unless said otherwise.

  • Ahmet Zahid Balcioglu (ahmet.balcioglu)
  • Markus Pettersson (markus.pettersson)
  • Alessandro Umberto Margueritte (alessandro-umberto.margueritte)
  • student TA (TBA)

Student Representatives

TBA

Announcements 

  • THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

Exam Aids

Dictionary, printout of the summary of course contents (which may contain own annotations), one additional handwritten A4 paper (both sides). 

To avoid a possible misunderstanding: The printout will not be provided in the exam hall. If you want to use it, you must bring an own copy.

Teaching

It consists of normally two lectures per week (Monday and Wednesday 10-12, with  some exceptions), some form of exercises and/or consultations, and written assignments. None of these items are compulsory, and the grade is solely based on the written exam.

See TimeEdit for the schedule.

THE FOLLOWING DETAILS MAY CHANGE BEFORE THE COURSE STARTS.

Consultation sessions (called Exercises in TimeEdit) are held in seminar rooms. They are intended to be an open forum where you can come by and ask or discuss any questions about course topics, get help with the assignments and with additional book exercises that you have tried.

You can drop in at any time. For an efficient use of time, please prepare clear questions. If you got stuck on an exercise, also prepare explanations of what you have tried and what you are wondering about. We will not give away complete solutions to assignmens, but we try to help you advance further from the point where you are.

If you rather prefer a "private" consultation on some matters, send a mail to make an appointment.

Lectures

Numbers indicate the related book sections. (Note: Chapters have different numbers in some editions of the book, in particular, chapters 4 and 5 are swapped. But it should be easy to recognize this and find the correct chapters  by their titles anyway.)

Sections in the Lecture Notes with the label "Problem" describe the computational problems treated in the course; do not misunderstand them as exercises.

The remaining schedule is always preliminary, and Lecture Notes will be added before or during the course.

  • Lecture 1. General notions: problem, instance, algorithm. Time complexity and O-notation (2.1, 2.2, 2.4). 
  • Lecture 2. Greedy algorithms. Interval Scheduling (4.1).
  • Lecture 3. Dynamic programming. Weighted Interval Scheduling (6.1, 6.2). a
  • Lecture 4. Dynamic programming for: Subset Sum and Knapsack (6.4). Segmentation problems (6.3).
  • Lecture 5. Dynamic programming for Sequence Alignment (6.6). Divide-and conquer. Binary search (end of 2.4). Skyline problem.
  • Lecture 6. Recurrences (5.1-5.2). Briefly about Sorting and Median Finding (5.1, 13.5).
  • Lecture 7. Counting Inversions (5.3). Fast Multiplication (5.5). Polynomial-time reductions (8.1).
  • Lecture 8. Complexity classes P and NP (8.3). NP-completeness (8.4). Satisfiability problem (8.2).
  • Lecture 9. Several NP-complete problems (from 8.5-8.7, very cursory).
  • Lecture 10. Graph traversal and Connectivity (3.2, 3.5). Coloring and Bipartiteness (3.4).
  • Lecture 11. Minimum Spanning Tree (4.5). Directed cycles and Topological Order, DAGs (3.6).
  • Lecture 12. Shortest and longest paths in DAGs and general graphs. Union-and-Find (4.6). Interval Partitioning (end of 4.1). Space-efficient Sequence Alignment (6.7).
  • Lecture 13. Closest points (5.4). Clustering with maximum spacing (4.7).

Assignments

To be added.

Literature

The course follows selected parts of the textbook
Jon Kleinberg, Eva Tardos: Algorithm Design. Pearson/Addison-Wesley 2006, ISBN 0-321-29535-8. (Any edition of the book is usable.)

Brief Course Description

See also the syllabus.

The course provides basic knowledge about methods for the design and  analysis of correct and fast algorithms that solve new problems with the use of computers. The intuitive notion of time complexity is applied in a strict sense. After completion of this course, you should be able to:

  • describe algorithms in writing, prove that they are correct and fast,
  • recognize non-trivial computational problems in real-world applications and formalize them,
  • recognize computationally intractable problems,
  • apply the main algorithm design techniques to problems which are similar to  the course examples but new,
  • perform the whole development cycle of algorithms: problem analysis, choosing, modifying and combining suitable techniques and data structures, analysis, filling in implementation details, looking for possible improvements,  etc.,
  • perform simple reductions between problems,
  • explain on a technical level what NP completeness means,
  • critically assess algorithmic ideas,
  • explain why time efficiency and correctness proofs are crucial.

This is not a course in programming! The main focus is on the analytical work that has to be done before writing any line of code. Accordingly, the  implementation of algorithms is NOT practiced here.

Grades are based on the points in the written exam. Point limits for the grades 3, 4, 5 will be announced there.

About the Assignments

"Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Let me do and I understand." (attributed to Confucius)

Computational problems in practice rarely occur in nice textbook form. We must be able to apply algorithm design techniques to new  problems, or at least adapt known algorithms to new variants of known  problems. Therefore this course is problem-oriented and the exam requires problem solving, too.

Moreover, one cannot learn these skills just by listening, or by reading a lot of solutions written by others. (Compare it to other skills: Can one learn to play a musical instrument just be watching others playing? Of course, one has to practice!) It is important to  actively solve problems. The course offers possibilities, mainly by assignments.

While the assignments are voluntary, it is strongly recommended to work on them as much as you can. Then you are not only in a much better position in the exam, we also hope that you find them interesting as such.

Written solutions to assignments:
Most importantly, train your ability to communicate solutions in written form. Even when you have solved an exercise and the solution seems clear to you, comprehensible writing remains a challenge. Moreover, in the exam you must do it, as you want the graders to understand your solutions. We advise you to submit written solutions to the assignments - as many as you can. The deadline is always Sunday 23:59. (Of course, you may submit earlier.) All assignments shall be done individually. Discussion is encouraged, but what you submit must be written in your own words and reflect your own understanding.

The level of assignments and exercises may be higher than the level of typical  exam problems. This is intended. During the course you have more time and  leisure for practicing more challenging and fun problems, and after all, one  learns for the profession, not only for the next exam.

Submission Details

We plan to use the Fire submission system rather than the Assignments feature of Canvas. Fire allows us a smoother coordination and is also convenient to use.

First create an account in Fire. You do this only once. As all submissions are individual, you don't have to create a group in Fire.

To create an account: Go to the Fire system. Bookmark the link (you will need it again), press "Click here to register as a student" and fill in your student email address. You will get a mail with a web address. Click this address, it leads you to a page where you can fill in your data: name, personal number, and a password. Spell your name correctly as "Firstname Surname" (only the most commonly used first name, with big initial letters) and write your personal number as yymmdd-xxxx with the dash, i.e., the minus sign. If you do not have a Swedish personal number, use a made-up number. Log on using the account you have just created.

To submit a solution: Log on to Fire again. Upload the file(s) that make up your solution. Finally press the "submit" button. (This is easy to forget.) Fire will close exactly at the given deadlines - do not wait until the last minute.

Submit solutions as PDF, created with a word processor or latex. Scanning handwritten sheets is discouraged, but if you must, they have to be readable. Your files must contain your name.

From the grader you will receive a mail with comments. You can also download the comments from Fire.

Special remark: By default you may always get "fail"; this has only technical reasons (possibility to resubmit an improved solution) and does not mean anything. Only the comments are of interest.

Course summary:

Date Details Due