CS/ECE 374 - Schedule, Notes, and Handouts

CS/ECE 374: Lecture and Lab Schedule


The calendar below lists the topics of each lecture and lab section for the semester, with links to relevant lecture notes, slides, lecture videos, and lab handouts. Topics for future lectures and labs are subject to change.

Videos for all lectures are automatically posted to a separate web page shortly after lecture. They will not be added to the schedule page below.

Week Tuesday Lecture Wednesday Lab Thursday Lecture Friday Lab
Jan 17-20

Administrivia, course goals, Strings and Languages
Notes on strings
[slides1, slides2]

String induction
[Jeff's induction notes, Chandra's additional notes] [solutions]
Languages and regular expressions
[slides]
Regular expressions
[solutions]
Jan 24-27 DFAs, product construction
[Automata Tutor] [slides] DFA Proofs
DFA construction
[solutions]
Non-determinism, NFAs
Jeff's NFA notes
[slides]
DFA product construction
[solutions]
Jan 31-Feb 3 NFAs continued, equivalence with DFAs and regular expressions
Jeff's NFA notes
[slides]
NFAs
[solutions]
Proving non-regularity via fooling sets
[slides][Fooling sets notes][Fooling sets guide]
Language transformations
[solutions]
Feb 7-10 Context-free languages and grammars
[slides]
Proving non-regularity
[solutions]
Turing machines: history, formal definitions, examples, variations
[slides]
Context free languages
[solutions]
Feb 14-17 Universal Turing Machine, RAM simulation, P
[UTM slides][complexity slides]
Turing machine design
[solutions]
Optional review for Midterm 1
Fodder for exam preparation
Regular or not and Fodder
[solutions]
Midterm 1: Monday, Feb 20, 7-9:30pm (Syllabus/Skillset)
Feb 21-24 Recursion: Hanoi, mergesort
[slides][solving recurrences]
Hint: Binary search
[solutions]
Divide and conquer: linear-time selection, Karatsuba multiplication
[recurrence notes] [slides]
Divide and conquer
[solutions]
Feb 28-Mar 3 Backtracking: independent set, longest increasing subsequence
[slides ]
Backtracking
[solutions]
Dynamic programming: splitting strings, longest increasing subsequence
[slides]
Dynamic programming
[solutions]
Mar 7-10 More DP: Edit Distance, MIS in trees
[slides]
More dynamic programming
[solutions]
CYK Algorithm, Graphs, basic search
[CYK slides, Graph search slides]
Yet even still more dynamic programming
Drop deadline
[solutions]
Mar 14-17 Spring break
Mar 21-24 Directed graphs, depth-first search
[slides]
Graph modeling
[solutions]
Graphs continued
[Graph notes]
Graph modeling
[solutions]
Mar 28-31 BFS and Shortest Paths
[slides]
Shortest paths
[solutions]
Shortest Paths with Negative Lengths via DP, All Pairs
[slides]
More shortest paths
[solutions]
April 4-7 MST Algorithms
[slides]
MST
[solutions]
Optional review for Midterm 2, Fodder Optional review for Midterm 2
Midterm 2: Monday, April 10, 7-9:30pm (Syllabus/Skillset)
April 11-14 Greedy algorithms
[slides]
Greedy
[solutions]
Undecidability: halting problem, diagonalization, reductions
[slides]
Undecidability via reductions
[solutions]
April 18-21 Reductions
[slides]
Self Reductions
[solutions]
NP, NP-Completeness, 3SAT to Independent Set
[slides][helpful video on P vs NP]
NP-hardness proofs
[solutions]
April 25-28 More NP-hardness reductions: 3-coloring, Hamiltonian cycle
[slides]
NP-Hardness, the final chapter
[solutions]
More on SAT, Wrap up
[slides]
Reductions
May 2-5 No lecture, optional review session 

Optional review for final, Fodder

Reading Day  
Final Exam: Friday, May 5, 8-11am (Syllabus/Skillset)