- Instructor:
- Mahesh Viswanathan (vmahesh@uiuc.edu), 3232 Siebel Center
Office hours: Thursday from 12:15-1:15, Friday from 1:30 to 2:30 or by arrangement
- Teaching assistants: Office hours will be held in the alcove outside 3240 Siebel Center.
- Erin Wolf Chambers, Office hour: Monday, 9:50-10:50am
Dan Cranston Office hours: Monday, 3-4pm
- Course materials:
- Homework instructions and FAQ
- Schedule, including links to lecture notes, homeworks, exams, and solutions.
- Jeff's general π73 webpage
Announcements:
- May 10 Due to a last minute resscheduling of a doctor's appointment, Mahesh will not be in his office between 12:30 and 1:30 as previously promised. The final exam can now be seen between 5 and 6pm on May 10 in Mahesh's office. Apologies for the incovenience this causes.
- May 9 The finals have been graded and the scores can be seen in Compass. The Total column now reflects your total raw score in the course. Students interested in seeing the final exam should come to Mahesh's office between 12:30 and 1:30 on Wednesday May 10.
- May 7 There will be extra office hours on Monday from 5-6pm.
- May 4 The solutions for midterm 2 (pdf, ps) are available.
- May 3 The solutions for midterm 1 (pdf, ps) are available.
- May 2 The review session will be held Thursday May 4 from 1-3pm in 2405 Siebel. Bring your questions.
- April 27: HW10 (pdf, ps) is available.
- April 19: HW9 (pdf, ps) is available.
- April 18: Final Exam is on Tuesday May 9 between 1:30 and 4:30 in Siebel 1404. Final Exam schedule for all classes can be found here
- April 11: HW8 (pdf, ps) is available.
- April 4: HW7 (pdf, ps) is available.
- March 22: There will be no headbanging the week after break. Remember that Tuesday will be an in class review, and Thursday will be the second midterm (also in class).
- March 16: Mahesh will be out of town for most of the week following spring break. His office hours for March 30 have been cancelled. He will however have office hours on Friday, March 31.
- March 14: Here is the Fall 2005 Midterm 2 (with solutions included) for your studying enjoyment. I'd recommend covering up the solutions when you first look at it, and actually giving the problems a try before peeking. This practice midterm covers roughly the same topics that our midterm will focus on - mainly dynamic programming and network flow.
- March 6: HW6 (pdf, ps) is available.
- February 28: The second midterm will be held on Thursday March 30, in class. It will test material covered since the first midterm.
- February 28: HW5 (pdf, ps) is available.
- February 21: HW4 (pdf, ps) is available.
- February 14: Here is an practice midterm from last semseter for your enjoyment.
- February 7: HW3 (pdf, ps) is available.
- January 31: HW2 (pdf, ps) is available.
- January 31: The head-banging session for tonight will be from 6:15-7:15 in 0224 Siebel. (Note the change in time.) Keep an eye on the newsgroup for info about next Tuesday, since the time and location may be different. Wednesday 3-4 and Thursday 6-7 are set for the entire semester to be in 0224 Siebel.
- January 28: Sign up for oral homework presentations. Read the newsgroup for details.
- January 25: HW0 solutions (pdf, ps) are available.
- January 24: HW1 (pdf, ps) is available. It will be due next Tuesday at the beginning of lecture.
- January 23: Here are a couple of resources that might help with HW0 - a review for Solving Recurrences and The Theoretical CS Cheat Sheet, which has a good list of solutions for various infinite series. Both might come in handy on HW0 and on later homeworks.
- January 17: HW0 (pdf, ps) is available. It will be due next Tuesday at the beginning of lecture. Everyone will be submitting HW0 in written form; oral presentations will begin with HW1. The homework instructions are also available; please read them before starting your homework!
- January 16: Welcome to CS473ug! HW0 should be up shortly for your enjoyment.
Administrivia:
- Prerequisites:
- Students are assumed to have mastered the material taught in CS 225 (basic algorithms and data structures) and CS 273 (discrete mathematics). 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.
- Newsgroup: class.cs473ug on the news server news.cs.uiuc.edu
- You must sign up for access if you have not already done so.
- Coursework and Grading:
- Ignoring bonus points, and 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 "unadjusted" 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.
After base grades are calculated, extra credit from head-banging session and from typing homework will be factored in. Extra credit will modify your base grade by at most half a letter grade. So if you are failing, it will probably not help you, but if you have a B+, it might help you raise your grade to an A-.
- Why are there two algorithms classes?