6.006 | Spring 2008 | Undergraduate

Introduction to Algorithms

Readings

In the table below, readings listed as CLRS are taken from the course textbook:

Buy at MIT Press Cormen, Thomas, Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest, and Clifford Stein. Introduction to Algorithms. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780262032933.

LEC # TOPICS READINGS
Introduction and document distance
L1 Introduction and document distance CLRS, chapters 1-3
L2 More document distance, mergesort CLRS, sections 11.1-11.2
Binary search trees
L3 Airplane scheduling, binary search trees CLRS, chapter 10 and sections 12.1-12.3
L4 Balanced binary search trees CLRS, sections 13.1 and 13.2 for a different approach (red-black trees)
Hashing
L5 Hashing I: chaining, hash functions

L6 Hashing II: table doubling, Karp-Rabin CLRS, chapter 17 and section 32.2
L7 Hashing III: open addressing CLRS, section 11.4 (and 11.3.3 and 11.5 if interested)
Sorting
L8 Sorting I: heaps CLRS, sections 2.1-2.3 and 6.1-6.2
L9 Sorting II: heaps CLRS, sections 6.1-6.4
L10 Sorting III: lower bounds, linear-time sorting CLRS, sections 8.1-8.4
L11 Sorting IV: stable sorting, radix sort

Searching
L12 Searching I: graph search, representations, and applications CLRS, sections 22.1-22.3 and B.4
L13 Searching II: breadth-first search and depth-first search CLRS, sections 22.2-22.3
L14 Searching III: topological sort and NP-completeness CLRS, sections 22.4 and 34.1-34.3 (at a high level)
Shortest paths
L15 Shortest paths I: intro CLRS, chapter 24 (intro)
L16 Shortest paths II: Bellman-Ford

L17 Shortest paths III: Dijkstra CLRS, sections 24.2-24.3
L18 Shortest paths IV: Dijkstra speedups

Wagner, Dorothea, and Thomas Willhalm. “Speed-Up Techniques for Shortest-Path Computations.” In Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Proceedings of the 24th Annual Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science. Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer, 2007. ISBN: 9783540709176. Read up to section 3.2.

Dynamic programming
L19 Dynamic programming I: memoization, Fibonacci, Crazy Eights, guessing CLRS, chapter 15
L20 Dynamic programming II: longest common subsequence, parent pointers

L21 Dynamic programming III: text justification, parenthesization, knapsack, pseudopolynomial time, Tetris training

L22 Dynamic programming IV: piano fingering, structural DP (trees), vertex cover, dominating set, and beyond

For fun, see papers on piano fingering and polyphonic piano fingering via DP:

Parncutt, Richard, et al. “An Ergonomic Model of Keyboard Fingering for Melodic Fragments.” Music Perception 14, no. 4 (1997): 341-382.

Al Kasimi, Alia, Eric Nichols, and Christopher Raphael. “A Simple Algorithm for Automatic Generation of Polyphonic Piano Fingerings.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, 2007, pp. 355-356.

For fun, watch the Metamorphosis of the Cube video, which illustrates a folding DP.

Numerics
L23 Numerics I

L24 Numerics II

Beyond 6.006
L25 Beyond 6.006: follow-on classes, geometric folding algorithms

Learning Resource Types
Problem Sets
Exams with Solutions
Lecture Notes
Presentation Assignments with Examples