Fall 2025 CS231

The language of computer science is to a great extent the language of algorithms. Although there are many thousands of algorithms, there are relative few basic design techniques. These include: divide-and-conquer, greedy, dynamic programming, and network flow. We will illustrate these techniques by studying a few fundamental algorithms of each type. In addition to helping us understand classic solution techniques, these algorithms have proven very useful in practice. Their names and the names of the problems they solve have become a standard part of the language of computer science.

Unfortunately, there is rarely a best algorithm to solve a given problem. Each approach involves a series of tradeoffs. Therefore, we will also study methods for evaluating the usefulness of an algorithm in a given situation. Among the various competing measures, we will focus primarily on the analysis of time and space complexity. However, a number of other issues will also be discussed.