Syllabus for CS141 (Winter 2003) MIDTERM (Feb 18th, in class)

Topics and Sample Questions for Midterm:

Concept of worst-case time-complexity
Asymptotic notations: big-Oh, big-Theta, big-Omega
- prove or disprove that the following function is big-Oh, big-Theta, big-Omega of ...
Properties of big-Oh, big-Theta, big-Omega
- prove or disprove that the following property hold ...
Discrete math
- prove the following statement by induction ...
Deriving recurrence relations
- derive a recurrence relation from the following pseudo-code ...
Solving recurrence relations
- solve the following recurrence relation by iterative substitution ...
- solve the following recurrence relation by Master Theorem ...
- prove by induction the correctness of the solution of the following recurrence relation ...
Greedy method (scheduling, change machine - AKA knapsack, Huffman, general compression)
- questions on the algorithms mentioned in parenthesis...
- devise a greedy algorithm for the following problem ...
- show why greedy is a bad choice for the following problem ...
- prove that the greedy choice for the following problem always leads to the optimal solution ...
Divide and Conquer method (mergesort, matrix multiplication/Strassen)
- questions on the algorithms mentioned in parenthesis...
- devise a divide and conquer algorithm for the following problem ...
Dynamic Programming method (Fibonacci, Pascal's Triangle, Stage-Coach problem, Probability Maximization, Project Planning)
- questions on the algorithms mentioned in parenthesis...
- devise a dynamic programming algorithm for the following problem ...
- given the final table for a dynamic programming algorithm, find all optimal solutions...

NOTE: The list above is representative of the problems that could be on the midterm, but not necessarly exhaustive