Development of strategies, techniques, and skills used in competitive programming contests. Topics include problem solving and programming techniques and algorithms. Course format consists of weekly meetings that include brief discussion, problem solving and programming practice, a practice programming contest, and a wrap-up discussion.

Grading is based on class attendance and participation, problem solving skills, and programming contest progress and results.

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

Text: Competitive Programming 3, by Halim and Halim, Lulu, 2013. 3rd edition.

• Weekly attendance in lab (see schedule below)
• ACM ICPC regional competition in Cincinnati, Ohio (Saturday, November 9; leave campus at 1:00 PM on 11/8/13, return by 9:00 PM 11/9/13)

• Progress Site
• Jerry's C++ template
• Jerry's Java template
• Contest Site
• UVa Problem Database and Solver site to generate correct output for a problem

Class meeting are Thursdays, 3:00-5:50, August 22-October 31, in LWSN B146.

1. [08/22]: Course introduction and “getting started” problems. slides contest
2. [08/29]: Ad hoc problems. slides contest
3. [09/05]: Data Structures, Part 1 slides contest (password 1234)
4. [09/12]: Data Structures, Part 2 slides contest (password 5678)
5. [09/19]: Problem-Solving Paradigms slides contest (password 9012); do 725 and 750 first
6. [09/26]: Divide & Conquer and Greedy Algorithms slides contest (password 3456); do 10611 and 10656 first
7. [10/03]: Dynamic Programming Part 1 slides contest (password 0123)
8. [10/10]: Dynamic Programming Part 2 slides contest (password 0123)
9. [10/17]: Graph Algorithms slides contest (password 1234)
10. [10/24]: More BFS slides contest (9876)
11. [10/31]: Competition Notes I
12. [11/07]: Competition Notes II