Overview

CSCI 140 is an introduction to algorithm design and analysis techniques. The course covers basic techniques used to analyze algorithms, basic techniques used in designing algorithms, and important classical algorithms. The goal is to learn how to apply all of the above to designing solutions to new problems (a skill that you will practice throughout the semester). Along the way there will be proof-writing and coding.

The prerequisites for the class are CSCI054 and CSCI062 (or CSCI060 and CSCI070 at HMC). Send me (Prof. Chen) an email if you have questions about the prerequisites.

Resources

The professor for this class is Professor Chen. I'm happy to talk about the class, about CS more generally, or about anything else. My office hours are Mondays 2:30-3:30pm and Fridays 9-10:30am. I'm also happy to meet by appointment (in person or on Zoom): send me an email with some times that work for you and a sense of what you want to talk about. I'm also available for occasional small group lunches/dinners if you'd just like to chat; I'll have a sign-up sheet on my office door by the end of the first week of classes.

The mentors/TAs for the class are Drew Goldman, Gavin Honey, and Jessica Tong. In general the mentor hours will be on the 1st or 2nd floor of Edmunds at times TBD. Please expect occasional changes and cancellations; these will be posted on Slack.

We'll use Canvas for distributing course materials. We'll use Slack for announcements and informal discussion. And we'll use Gradescope for submitting and returning assignments. Let me know if you run into issues accessing any of these.

There is no required textbook for the class. That said, you may find it helpful to refer to the following classic textbook and in the calendar below I've included an approximate mapping of lecture topics to book sections:

• Introduction to Algorithms, 4th Edition by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein (CLRS). There are a few physical copies in Edmunds 227 which you can refer to while you're working in Edmunds 227. Since it's being used as a resource, the 3rd edition is also fine and you may be able to find inexpensive copies of the 3rd edition online.

You are encouraged to look for and to use other resources to learn more about the ideas and concepts. You may not, however, look directly for answers to specific questions on the weekly problem sets (see the discussion of academic honesty below as well as the slides from the first lecture). Some other resources include:

• Design, Analysis, and Implementation of Algorithms and Data Structures by Charles Cusack (this is an open-access, interactive textbook)
• Algorithms Illuminated by Tim Roughgarden
• Algorithms by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou, and Umesh Vazirani

If you find anything particularly helpful you are strongly encouraged to share it with the class on Slack.

If you might need accommodations please contact the Disability Coordinator on your home campus. The process for Pomona students is available here.

More generally, life happens to all of us and we know there may be times when staying on top of the workload in this class is going to feel like too much on top of everything else that you're managing. If that happens, please come talk to me so that I'm aware and can work with you to figure out a plan. Please keep in touch! (Note: I encourage you to come talk to me even if there isn't anything in particular that you feel you need to discuss.)

Logistics

The basic flow each week will be as follows:

• Monday 1:15-2:30pm: lecture
• Wednesday 1:15-2:30pm: lecture
• Thursday-Friday: small group meeting
• Friday 10pm: group assignment due
• Sunday 10pm: weekly problem set due

The lectures will be in Edmunds 114.

You will be assigned to a small group of approximately 5 students the first week of class. Your group will work together for the entire semester; your first task will be to find an hour when all of you can meet either Thursday or Friday. The plan is for each group to have an assigned TA who will attend the meetings to answer questions, talk through concepts, etc. Each week there will be a low-stakes assignment to work on during your group meeting; this should be turned in by 10pm Friday evening on Gradescope. There are no extensions on the groupwork so please make sure everyone knows who is submitting each week's assignment! Because these are graded on attendance and effort rather than on correctness, please make it clear in your submission that your group looked at every question even if you choose not to submit a response. There may occasionally be anonymous surveys for you to give feedback on how your group is doing, but please feel free to bring up concerns with me at any time.

In addition, there will be a weekly problem set that asks you to apply concepts in new ways. You are strongly encouraged to discuss the problems with anyone else currently taking cs140 (or with the TAs or myself), but you must write up your own solution without referring to any written/typed/etc materials that may have been generated during such discussion. In addition, you must acknowledge who you worked with and what their contribution was. Submitting an answer copied from another student, found on the internet, or generated by an AI-powered system such as ChatGPT is considered an academic honesty violation (see academic honesty policy). (Stop yourself before either copying the problem set question into genAI, or copying text generated by genAI into your submitted solutions. Either of those is unacceptable.) Unless stated otherwise, problem sets are due by 10pm on the due date. There is an automatic 24-hour extension on all problem sets (i.e. until 10pm the next day); additional extensions will require documentation of circumstances that could not have been anticipated.

There will also be quizzes approximately every other week. The calendar below lists the quiz dates. We will typically allocate the first 30 minutes of lecture to each of these quizzes; the rest of the time in lecture will be used to cover new material. The last class of the semester is set aside for retakes of these written quizzes: if you need to miss any of the quiz dates for any reason, you should plan to include that quiz as one that you retake in class on 12/9. Note that that last quiz will be done in short one-on-one whiteboard sessions that you'll schedule individually with me. There will be more information as we get closer to the end of the semester.

There is no final exam.

The breakdown of grades will be as follows:

• 20% problem sets
• 70% written quizzes
• 10%/5% whiteboard quizzes
• 0%/5% group work

Schedule

This is a high-level outline of the planned schedule. Note that the calendar is subject to change. For the readings "CLRS" refers to the book "Introduction to Algorithms, 4th edition" by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein.

Unless stated otherwise, all deadlines are at 10pm on the given date.