CS 411 Fall 2025  >  Outline for August 25, 2025

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CS 411 Fall 2025
Outline
for August 25, 2025

Outline

Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms [L Ch 1]

• Algorithm
  • Unambiguous.
  • Must terminate, for each possible input.
  • Solve a problem.
• Exact vs. approximate
  • Example of Bin Packing.
• Specifying an algorithm: pseudocode?
• Good algorithm
  • Efficiency: time, space, other (network bandwidth?).
  • Simplicity.
  • Generality.
• Important problem types
  • Sorting.
  • Searching.
  • String processing.
  • Graph problems
    • Graph: points joined by lines. Points are vertices; lines are edges.
    • Directed graph or digraph: edges have direction (usually represented by an arrow), and are call arcs.
  • Combinatorial problems.
  • Geometric.
  • Numeric.