CS 39000-004: Competitive Programming

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This course is scheduled to be offered in fall 2010. Topics and other details below to be updated.

Course meetings now scheduled: Tuesdays, 3:00-5:50, LWSN B158.

Development of strategies, techniques, and skills used in competitive programming contests. Topics include problem solving and programming techniques and algorithms. Course format consists of a weekly meeting that includes lecture (30 minutes), programming practice (two hours), and discussion (20 minutes).

Credit: 1 hour. Prerequisite: CS 25100 (Data Structures).

Topics by week (based on Skiena textbook and course):

1. Getting Started
2. Data Structures
3. Strings
4. Sorting
5. Arithmetic
6. Combinatorics
7. Number Theory
8. Contest Strategies/Backtracking
9. ICPC Logistics and Practice Contest
10. Geometry
11. Review of ACM ICPC RPC Problems
12. Amazon Ninja problems, Dynamic Programming, Grids

Other topics:

1. Graph Traversal
2. Graph Algorithms
3. Computational Geometry

The top students in the class will represent Purdue at the regional ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition in November, 2009.

Textbook: Programming Challenges, Steven S. Skiena and Miguel Revilla, Springer, 2003 (ISBN 978-0387001630).

Instructions to Check Enrollment