CS331: Algorithms and Complexity

Unique Numbers: 51035, 51040, 51055, 51060

Spring 2016
Course Overview

Course Description: This course includes: Analysis of algorithms, Graph algorithms, Greedy
algorithms, Divide-and-conquer, Dynamic programming, Network flow, NP-completeness,
Undecidability, Approximation algorithms, Randomized algorithms.
Note: See the course schedule below for a more detailed lecture plan.

Prerequisites: The following coursework with a grade of at least C- in each course: CS 311 or 311H,
314 or 314H, CS 429 or 429H; M 408C or 408N; SSC 321 or M 362K; and a pre-req or co-req of M
340L or SSC 329C.

Quantitative Reasoning (QR) flag: This course carries the Quantitative Reasoning flag. Quantitative
Reasoning courses are designed to equip you with skills that are necessary for understanding the types of
quantitative arguments you will regularly encounter in your adult and professional life. You should
therefore expect a substantial portion of your grade to come from your use of quantitative skills to
analyze real-world problems.

Textbook: Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos (Addison-Wesley, 2006).

Lecture Times and Locations:

MW 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in CLA 0.126 (51035/51040)
MW 02:00 p.m.-03:30 p.m. in UTC 3.122 (51055/51060)

Discussion Section Times and Locations

F 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. in CBA 4.348 (51035) - lead by TBA
F 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. in CBA 4.348 (51040) - lead by TBA
F 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. in GDC 5.302 (51055) - lead by TBA
F 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in WEL 2.256 (51060) - lead by TBA

Contacts, discussions, and feedback procedure

Instructor: Fares Fraij

Contact: fares@cs.utexas.edu
Office hours: M 12:40 p.m.-1:40 p.m. (at GDC 4.310)
T 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. (at GDC 4.310)

Teaching Assistants: The TAs office hours will be held in the TA alcove in the north basement of the
CS building, room GDC 1.302.
o

TA1: TBA
Contact:
Office hours:
TA2: TBA
Contact: TBA
Office hours:
TA3: TBA
Contact:
Office hours:
Proctor: TBA
Contact:
Office hours:

Note: Most questions should be submitted to Piazza (https://piazza.com/) rather than by sending an email to a
member of the instructional staff.

Piazza: Students are encouraged to participate in Piazza (https://piazza.com/). Using Piazza, students
can ask and answer questions. Students can discuss any issues related to the course except posting any
part of their solution to homework assignments.

Feedback: Throughout the semester, please feel free to provide feedback to the instructor regarding any
aspect of the course.

Evaluation

Grade Basis: Each student's overall raw score, out of 100 points, is distributed as follows.
o Tests: 60 points (Three tests: 20 points for each test).
o Quizzes: 15 points.
o Assignments: 25 points.

Letter Grade: The mapping from overall raw scores to letter grades will depend somewhat on the
overall performance of the class. The nominal A/A- cutoff is 90; A-/B+ is 85; B+/B is 80; B/B- is 75; B/C+ is 70; C+/C is 65; C/C- is 60; C-/D is 55. These nominal cutoffs will not be increased; for example,
a student achieving a raw score of 90 is guaranteed to receive an A in the course. However, these cutoffs
might be lowered if necessary in order to improve the grade distribution.

Make-Up Tests: Please note that no make-up tests will be given in this course. If a student has a
legitimate and properly documented excuse for missing one of the tests, the missing test score will be
estimated as the average of the other two test scores. More complicated scenarios, e.g., where a student
misses two tests for legitimate reasons, will be treated on a case-by-case basis. In the event of a nonexcused absence, a score of zero will be assigned.

iClicker: An iClicker is a remote control device that allows a student to respond to questions posts by
the instructor. iClickers will be used to administer most of the quizzes in this class. Thus, you need to
buy and register your own iClicker.
o The iClicker is available at the University Co-Op bookstore or the iClicker website.
o To register your iClicker, you need to provide the following information:

your first name,

your last name,

your UT EID (student ID) with no spaces, and

your clicker's ID (the serial number under the bar code on the back of the device).

Note: that if you already have an iClicker and you registered it in the past semesters, you need to re-register it
again this semester.

Student Guidelines

Time: This is a dense course. Each student should continuously and constantly be reading. Some of the
topics cannot be understood without re-reading them many times and trying out some examples. To do
well in this class, you should expect to commit an average of 10 quality hours per week outside of class.

Office Hours: If you encounter any problems with the course material, you are encouraged to come
during the office hours of the instructor or the teaching assistants. However, if you prefer to send a
question, please do so via Piazza rather than an email to the instructor or the teaching assistants.

Materials: The syllabus and the schedule of the course are available on-line and can be accessed
through the instructor's web page. The assignments however will only be available via Canvas
(http://canvas.utexas.edu/). Additional course material may be made available through Canvas.

Reading: Each student should read the assigned material BEFORE the specified material is scheduled to
be discussed in class. Not all assigned material will be covered in class. It is the student's responsibility
to ask questions in class regarding assigned material that is not fully understood. In addition, the student
should study the material covered in the PREVIOUS class to be ready for quizzes.

Knowledge Assessment: Tests, homework assignments, and quizzes will be used to assess your
understanding of the course material.
o Tests: There will be three in-class tests. Each test is closed book and closed notes. Students will
be only allowed to bring one page of notes (8.5 by 11 inch sheet), double-sided. Check the tests
dates in the class schedule.
o Assignments: There will be regular homework assignments throughout the semester.
Assignments will be posted on Canvas (http://canvas.utexas.edu/) on Wednesday and will be due
the following Wednesday. Please submit your homework using Canvas' assignments page.
Assignments must be submitted as a .pdf files. Handwritten assignments or late submissions will
not be accepted.
o Quizzes: There will be regular quizzes throughout the semester. Most of the quizzes will be
administer using clickers. We may have more than one quiz per class. Each quiz may cover the
material of the previous class and/or the current class. There will be no makeup quizzes. The
lowest 20% of your quizzes scores will be dropped.

Homework: Homework is a good venue for learning and the basis for questions in exams. Start working
on your homework as early as you can. You should not wait until the night before the due date. You can
work in pairs to discuss general concepts of the homework but each student should submit his or her
own individual work. Copying someone else's solutions or copying the homework from another source
(the web, other classes, etc.) is considered as cheating. Cheating is a very serious offense. If you are
caught cheating, you can expect a failing grade and initiation of a cheating case in the University
system.
Many questions in this class will be of the form "Design an algorithm for the following problem." Your
answers to such questions must take the following into consideration.
o Words like "describe" or "write" an algorithm for a problem means that you should write English
description of the algorithm by clearly and unambiguously specifying the input, output, and the
process of the algorithm. Do not provide pseudo-code unless the question directly asks you to do
so.
o Unless stated otherwise, every homework problem requires a proof. Without a proof, even a
perfectly correct solution is worth nothing.

Grading: After receiving your grades for tests, assignments, or quizzes, you have only one week to
contest your grades.
o For any concerns about your quiz scores, please contact the instructor during his office hours or
by email.
o For any concerns about your assignments or test scores, please contact the corresponding TA
during his/her office hours or by email.
Note: If the one week time frame is passed, no changes in grades will be made.

Electronic Devices: Cell phones and laptops must be turned off and put away during class. If you want
to take notes using your laptop or other electronic devices, please talk to me before the class starts.

Academic Honesty: Students are expected to behave professionally and ethically according to the
department's code of conduct (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/academics/conduct)

Accommodations for Religious Holidays: By UT Austin policy, you must notify me of your pending
absence at least 14 days prior to the date of observance of a religious holy day. If you must miss a class,
an examination, a work assignment, or a project in order to observe a religious holy day, you will be
given an opportunity to complete the missed work within a reasonable time after the absence.

Disabilities: Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the
Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Services for Students with Disabilities, you can
either call 512-471-6259 or visit the following website Services for Students with Disabilities
(http://ddce.utexas.edu/disability/)

Tentative Course Schedule

Date
Jan 20
Jan 25
Jan 27
Feb 1
Feb 3
Feb 8
Feb 10
Feb 15
Feb 17

Lecture
Syllabus, Introduction, Stable Marriage
Stable Marriage, Complexity
Complexity, Undirected graph traversal
Undirected graph traversal, Directed graph traversal
Greedy algorithms
Minimum Spanning Trees, Kruskal's MST algorithm
Merge Sort and Recurrence relations: unrolling, Master method
Closest pair
Review

Feb 22

TEST 1

Feb 24
Feb 29
Mar 2
Mar 7
Mar 9
Mar 14
Mar 16
Mar 21
Mar 23
Mar 28
Mar 30

Dynamic programming: Weighted interval scheduling,

Memoization
Dynamic programming: subset sum, sequence alignment
Bellman-Ford shortest paths algorithm
Ford-Fulkerson maximum-flow algorithm
Max-flow min-cut theorem
SPRING BREAK
SPRING BREAK
Applications of maximum-flow algorithms
NP
NP-completeness
Review

Apr 4

TEST 2

Apr 6
Apr 11
Apr 13
Apr 18
Apr 20
Apr 25
Apr 27
May 2

Graph coloring
PSPACE and PSPACE-completeness
Undecidability
Halting problem
Approximation algorithms
Approximation algorithms
Randomized algorithms
Randomized selection and sorting

May 4

TEST 3

Reading
1.1
1.1, 2.1
2.2, 3.1, 3.2
3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6
4.1, 4.2, 4.4
4.5
5.1, notes1
5.4

Assignment

1 out
1 in, 2 out
2 in, 3 out
3 in

covers all course

material up to Feb 17
6.1, 6.2
6.4, 6.6
6.8
7.1
7.2

7.7, 7.9
8.1, 8.2
8.3, 8.4

4 out
4 in, 5 out

5 in, 6 out
6 in

covers all course

material from Feb 22
to Mar 30
8.7
9.1, 9.2
notes2
7 out
2
notes
11.1, 11.3
7 in, 8 out
11.4, 11.6
13.3
8 in, 9 out
13.5
covers all course
material from Mar 30 9 in
onward

The discussion about master method for solving recurrences is from Introduction to Algorithms, third edition
by Cormen et al, Section 4.5 pp 93-96.
2
The discussion about Turing machine (undecidability and halting problem) is from Introduction to theory of
computation by Michael Sipser, second edition, parts of ch3 and ch4.