CS 170
Efficient Algorithms and Intractable
Problems
a.k.a. Introduction to CS Theory
Prof. Satish Rao
Fall 2013
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CS 170 |
Addresses:
Contact address:
cs170@inst.eecs
Web page:
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs170/
Lectures:
MWF 11:00-12:00, 2050 VLSB.
| Section Number | Location | Time | GSI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 111 | 2038 VLSB | Wed 1-2pm | Rohin Shah |
| 101 | 71 Evans | Wed 1-2pm | Lewin Gan |
| 112 | 106 Wheeler | Wed 2-3pm | Rudy Dai |
| 102 | 4 Evans | Wed 2-3pm | Lewin Gan |
| 103 | 75 Evans | Wed 3-4pm | Edwin Liao |
| 104 | 2 Evans | Wed 4-5pm | Piyush Srivastava |
| 105 | 85 Evans | Thur 10-11am | Piyush Srivastava |
| 113 | 2011 VLSB | Thur 11am-12pm | Di Wang |
| 106 | 87 Evans | Thur 11am-12pm | Rohin Shah |
| 109 | 107 GPB | Thur 12-1pm | Di Wang |
| 110 | 105 Latimer | Thur 1-2pm | Yun Park |
| 107 | 87 Evans | Thur 2-3pm | Yun Park |
| 108 | 87 Evans | Thur 3-4pm | Rudy Dai |
Office Hours: Please see piazza!
Handing in your homework: each problem should be scanned on a new page, the first page should still have name, TA name, discussion section time, and homework number.
No late homeworks will be accepted. Out of a total of approximately 12 homework assignments, the lowest two scores will be dropped.
Do extra credit only if you really enjoy working on these problems. It is likely not the most efficient manner in which to maximize your score.
Contact information: The staff (instructor and TAs) will check Piazza regularly, and important announcements will be made there. Moreover, other students will be able to help you too. Please avoid posting answers to homework questions before the homework is due.
If your question is personal or not of interest to other students, use the private message on Piazza for the course staff. You may also email cs170@inst. This will go to the course staff. If you wish to talk with one of us individually, you are welcome to come to our office hours. If the office hours are not convenient, you may make an appointment with any of us by email. Please reserve email for the questions you can't get answered in office hours, in discussion sections, or through Piazza.
Announcements: The instructor and TAs will periodically post announcements, clarifications, etc. to the piazzza group. Hence it is important that you check the Piazza group and course webpage frequently throughout the semester.
Prerequisites: The prerequisites for CS 170 are CS 61B and either CS 70 or Math 55. It is important that you be comfortable with mathematical induction, big-O notation, basic data structures, and programming in a standard imperative language (e.g., Java or C). You will need to be familiar with the Unix operating system and basic tools.
Collaboration: You are encouraged to work on homework problems in study groups of two to four people; however, you must always write up the solutions on your own. You must never read or copy the solutions of other students, and you must not share your own solutions with other students. Similarly, you may use books or online resources to help solve homework problems, but you must always credit all such sources in your writeup and you must never copy material verbatim. We believe that most students can distinguish between helping other students and cheating. Explaining the meaning of a question, discussing a way of approaching a solution, or collaboratively exploring how to solve a problem within your group is an interaction that we encourage. On the other hand, you should never read another student's solution or partial solution, nor have it in your possession, either electronically or on paper. You must never share your written solutions, or a partial solutions, with another student, even with the explicit understanding that it will not be copied. You should write your homework solution strictly by yourself. You must explicitly acknowledge everyone who you have worked with or who has given you any significant ideas about the homework. Not only is this good scholarly conduct, it also protects you from accusations of theft of your colleagues' ideas.
Warning: Your attention is drawn to the Department's Policy on Academic Dishonesty. In particular, you should be aware that copying or sharing solutions, in whole or in part, from other students in the class or any other source without acknowledgment constitutes cheating. Any student found to be cheating risks automatically failing the class and being referred to the Office of Student Conduct.
Textbook: We will use Algorithms (Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani) as our textbook. An earlier draft of the textbook is available online; however, the chapter and exercise numbers may differ. All chapter numbers and exercise numbers in this course refer to the official paper textbook, not the online version.
Grading policies: On homeworks, we insist that you provide a clear explanation of your algorithm. It is not acceptable to provide a long pseudocode listing with no explanation. In our experience, in such cases the algorithm usually turns out to be incorrect. Even if your algorithm turns out to be correct, we reserve the right to deduct points if it is not clearly explained. We will not grade messy or unreadable submissions.
Re-grading policies: Regrading of homeworks or exams will only be undertaken in cases where you believe there has been a genuine error or misunderstanding. If you believe that your homework answer was correct and you should have received full points, please post a regrade request with an explanation on the Piazza thread corresponding to the problem. We will only accept regrade requests for up to one week after your graded solution is returned to you. For homework grading appeals, we will only accept homework regrade requests if you believe that your answer on that problem is 100% correct and you should have received full credit; we will not regrade homeworks in cases where you believe that you should have received more partial credit. For exam regrade requests, please turn in your exam as well as a justification for each problem you want regraded. Regrade requests will only be accepted within a week of when the exams are handed back. Also, keep in mind that partial credit regrade requests will rarely succeed, since all exams where graded in a regular fashion.
Bear in mind that our primary aim in grading is consistency, so that all students are treated the same; for this reason, we will not adjust the score of one student on an issue of partial credit unless the score allocated clearly deviates from the grading policy we adopted for that problem.
Homeworks: Your homework solutions must be written legibly and contain your name, your TA's name, your discussion section time, and the homework number. You might receive no credit for assignments that are turned in without this information. We do not attempt to grade messy and unreadable solutions. If a problem can be interpreted in more than one way, clearly state the assumptions under which you solve the problem. In writing up your homework you are allowed to consult any book, paper, or published material. If you do so, you are required to cite your source(s). Model solutions will be made available after the due date. Grade problem sets will be returned in discussion section.
Late homework policy: We will give no credit for homeworked turned in after the deadline. No exceptions. Please don't ask for extensions. We don't mean to be harsh, but we prefer to make model solutions available shortly after the due date, which makes it impossible to accept late homeworks.
Exams: The midterms and final exam are mandatory. If you are unable to attend for any reason, contact the instructor without delay.
Don't be afraid to ask for help: Are you struggling? We'd rather you approached us for help, rather than falling behind gradually over the semester until things become untenable. Sometimes this happens when students are afraid of an unpleasant conversation with a professor if they admit to not understanding something. We would much rather deal with your misunderstanding early than deal with its consequences later. Even if you are convinced that you are the only person in the class that doesn't understand the material, and that it is entirely your fault for having fallen behind, please overcome your feeling of guilt and ask for help as soon as you need it. Remember that the other students in the class are working under similar constraints--they are taking multiple classes and are often holding down outside employment. Don't hesitate to ask us for help--helping you learn the material is what we're paid to do, after all!
1. Don't fall behind! In a conceptual class such as this, it is particularly important to maintain a steady effort throughout the semester, rather than hope to cram just before homework deadlines or exams. This is because it takes time and practice for the ideas to sink in. Make sure you allocate a sufficient number of hours every week to the class, including enough time for reading and understanding the material as well as for doing assignments. (As a rough guide, you should expect to do at least one hour of reading and two hours of problem solving for each hour of lecture.) Even though this class does not have any major projects, you should plan to spend as much time on it as your other technical classes.
2. Do the homeworks! The homeworks are explicitly designed to help you to learn the material as you go along. Although the numerical weight of the homeworks is not huge, there is usually a strong correlation between homework scores and final grades in the class. (The most common denominator among people who do poorly in the class is that they skipped several homework assignments or multiple homework problems.)
Also, regardless of how well you did on the homework, read the sample solutions, even for the problems you got right. You may well learn a different way of looking at the problem, and you may also benefit from emulating the style of the solutions. (In science people learn a lot from emulating the approach of more experienced scientists.)
3. Don't wait until the last minute to start homeworks! My best advice is to read through the homework problems as soon as they are available, and let them percolate in your brain. Think through possible approaches while you are waiting in line, or stuck in an elevator, or whatever. Sleeping on a problem has often helped people to come up with a creative approach to it. Definitely do not wait until the night before it is due to start working on the homework.
4. Make use of office hours! The instructor and TAs hold office hours expressly to help you. It is often surprising how many students do not take advantage of this service. You are free to attend as many office hours as you wish (you are not constrained just to use the office hours of your section TA). You will also likely get more out of an office hour if you have spent a little time in advance thinking about the questions you have, and formulating them precisely. (In fact, this process can often lead you to a solution yourself!)
5. Take part in discussion sections! Discussion sections are not auxiliary lectures. They are an opportunity for interactive learning. The success of a discussion section depends largely on the willingness of students to participate actively in it. As with office hours, the better prepared you are for the discussion, the more you are likely to get out of it.
6. Form study groups! As stated above, you are encouraged to form small groups (two to four people) to work together on homeworks and on understanding the class material on a regular basis. In addition to being fun, this can save you a lot of time by generating ideas quickly and preventing you from getting hung up on some point or other. Of course, it is your responsibility to ensure that you contribute actively to the group; passive listening will likely not help you much. And recall the caveat above that you must write up your solutions on your own. I strongly advise you to spend some time on your own thinking about each problem before you meet with your study partners; this way you will be in a position to compare ideas with your partners, and it will get you in practice for the exams. Make sure you work through all problems yourself. I've seen a few groups that split up the problems ("you do Problem 1, I'll do Problem 2, then we'll swap notes"); not only is this a punishable violation of our collaboration policies, it also ensures you will learn a lot less from this course.
Mail inquiries to cs170@inst.eecs.berkeley.edu.