- Instructor:
- Mahesh Viswanathan (vmahesh AT uiuc.edu), 3232 Siebel Center
Office hours: Wednesday and Friday from 10:00-11:00 or by arrangement
- Teaching assistants:
- Office hours will be held in 0207 Siebel Center
Charles Blatti, Thursday 12:30-1:30
Benjamin Moseley, Tuesday 1:00-2:00
Hemanta Kumar Maji, Thursday 5:00-6:00
- Course materials:
Announcements:
Tuesday, May 5Monday, May 5
- Final Grades for this class have been posted on Compass. The column "Final Grade" will be your final grade.
- The column FinalExam in Compass gives the score you received in the final exam. HomeworkTotal column is the total homework score after dropping the lowest score. It was calculated by scaling homework 0 to be out of 30 (instead of 40) and adding up the ten best homework scores. So that total is out of 300. Finally, the Total column gives your total score in the course, by giving 25% weight to homeworks, 20% to each midterm and 35% to the final. The total column has a maximum of 100 points. Please check to make sure all the compass entries for you are correct. Watch out for an announcement about your final grade which will be computed soon.
Thursday, May 1
- Graded finals can be seen in Mahesh's office (3232 Siebel) tomorrow (May 6) between 12 and 1.
Wednesday, April 30
- Mahesh will have extra office hours on Friday (tomorrow) between 10 and 11.
Monday, April 28
- The final exam will be held in two room: DCL 1310 and 217 Noyes Lab. If your last name starts with a letter between A and K (inclusive) then you will take your exam in DCL 1310. If you last name starts with a letter between L and Z (inclusive) then you will take your exam in 217 Noyes Lab.
Sunday, April 27
- The TAs will be holding two review sessions on Thursday, May 1. The first will be in room 3405 SC from 11 until 12. The second will be in room 4405 SC from 4 until 5. Please bring your questions with you. We will also have the old assignments and exams available for pick up at these times.
Wednesday, April 23
- As announced in class on Friday, there will be no class on Wednesday April 30. However, Mahesh will have extended office hours from 10am to 12:15pm.
- A practice final exam is now available on Compass.
- The final exam will have the following format. There will be 7 problems of equal weight. The first problem will be multiple choice and will test all the material covered in the course. Out of the remaining 6 problems, there will be 3 problems on material after the second midterm, and 3 problems on material before the second midterm.
Thursday, April 17
- Due to a medical emergency, Mahesh's office hours for today are cancelled. Rohit Chadha will lecture in Mahesh's place.
Friday, April 11
- Homework Ten has been released. Please note that all groups will turn in written solutions to this homework. This is the last homework for this course.
Thursday, April 3
- Homework Nine has been released. Please note that all groups will turn in written solutions to this homework.
Tuesday, March 25
- Homework Eight has been released.
- There was some confusion with regards to oral submitions of homework 7. Therefore we propose to do the following. Everyone must turn in written solutions to Homework 7 by Monday 9am, by slipping it into Siebel 3232. If you already turned in a solution today in class you don't need to resubmit a solution. However if you would like to revise it, you can also turn in a new solution (to the relevant problems) by Monday. Group C will turn in Homework 8 orally, and that will be the last oral submition in this semester.
Thursday, March 13
- Practice second midterm and solutions now available on Compass.
- Mahesh is away this week and so his office hours for this week have been cancelled.
- Homework 7 has been released. Please note that this due only after the midterm, on April 4 (i.e. in about 10 days).
Wednesday, March 12
- Practice Homework has been released. Please do not turn in solutions to this homework.
Thursday, March 6
- The second midterm will be held on March 28 during class hours (11 to 12:15) in Loomis 151. Please note the change in location.
- The final exam for this course will be held on Saturday, May 3 between 8am and 11am. The location for the exam will be announced once a room gets assigned for this course. Requests for conflict finals should be sent to the instructional staff as soon as possible.
Tuesday, March 4
- Homework Six has been released. Please note that all groups will turn in written solutions to this homework.
Friday, February 29
- Mahesh's office hours tomorrow are cancelled. He will instead have office hours between 10 and 11 on Thursday.
- Statics about the partial total in Compass posted on newsgroup.
Tuesday, February 26
- Homework Five has been released.
Friday, February 22
- Mahesh's office hours tomorrow are cancelled. He will instead have office hours between 10 and 11 on Thursday.
Saturday, February 16
- Homework Four has been released.
Thursday, February 7
- Practice midterm and solutions posted on Compass.
Tuesday, February 5
- Homework Three has been released.
Thursday, January 31
- Benjamin's office hours for today are cancelled.
- Each group member is not required to turn in a copy of the solutions; we need only one solution from each group.
Thursday, January 24
- Homework Two has been released.
Friday, January 18
- Homework One has been released. Look up your Homework Group to see if you need to prepare an oral or a written submission.
- Homework Zero has been released. It is to be submitted individually on January 25 by the end of class. Please read the Homework FAQ thoroughly to prevent losing points on formatting issues.
- All homeworks besides Homework Zero, are to be done in groups of up to 3 people. Please form groups as soon as possible and sign up on the sheet in Elaine Wilson's office (3229 Siebel). Every student in CS 473 must have their name on the sign up sheet by Wednesday, January 23. Thanks.
Administrivia:
- Prerequisites:
- Students are assumed to have mastered the material taught in CS 225 (basic algorithms and data structures) and CS 273 (theory of computation). Please note that "mastery" is not the same as "exposure" or even "a good grade". Hence, Homework Zero.
- Required textbook:
- Jon Kleinberg and Éva Tardos. Algorithm Design. Addison-Wesley, 2005.
- Other recommended resources:
- Jeff Erickson's course material.
- Sariel Har-Peled's course material.
- Theoretical Computer Science Cheat Sheat.
- Book: Algorithms by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, Vazirani. On reserve at Grainger.
- Book: Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein. On reserve at Grainger.
- Book: Computers and Intractability by Garey and Johnson. On reserve at Grainger.
- Newsgroup: class.cs473 on the news server news.cs.uiuc.edu
- You must sign up for access if you have not already done so. It will be used by the TAs and is an excellent resource.
- Exams:
- There will be two midterms scheduled during regular class times (in the regular classroom). The dates for these exams are Friday February 22, and Friday March 28.
- Coursework and Grading:
- Allocating 20% to each midterm, 35% for the final exam, and 25% for oral group presentations and written homeworks, the following ranges correspond to the indicated grades. Class Percentile is computed after first eliminating "bottom dwellers" from the pool. This group, up to a maximum of 5% of class, comprises those students who in the opinion of the professor appear to have given up, or are not trying, or do not realize they are actually enrolled.
Use whichever criterion (class percentile, coursework percentage) gives the most favorable grade
Class Percentile Grade Coursework Percentage Earned 95 A+ 95 85 A 93 80 A- 90 70 B+ 87 60 B 83 50 B- 80 40 C+ 77 30 C 73 20 C- 70 15 D+ 67 10 D 63 5 D- 60 <5 F < 60 The Class Percentile above (left column) is meant as the main grading criterion. The Coursework Percentage (right column) may result in a higher grade in the event that there is little spread on the course distribution, rendering percentile less informative. Typically this happens when exams and homeworks are too easy (which is another way of saying that typically this doesn't happen). The instructor reserves the right to make the cutpoints in the Coursework Percentage column more generous, except for the A+ grade cut-off.