Lectures Introduction to Theory of Computation Discrete Probability Theory Efficient Algorithms and
Data Structures II Online and Approximation Algorithms Complexity Theory Proseminar Graph Drawing Lab Course Algorithms for Programming Contests

Practical Course: Algorithms for Programming Contests

Lecturer
Prof. Dr. Ernst W. Mayr
Teaching Assistant
Stefan Toman
Chris Pinkau
Philipp Hoffmann
Christian Müller
Please use the following e-mail address only: conpra@in.tum.de.
Module
IN0012, IN2106, TUMonline
Preliminary Discussion
The preliminary discussion will take place on Friday, January 23, 14:00 in room MI HS 2.
Time and Place
Thursday, 12:00-14:00, room MI 00.13.009A
Computer Room
The problems may be solved using our computer room MI 03.09.034, the "Rechnerhalle" or your own computer.
Area
Computer Science III (Theoretical Computer Science)
Prerequisites
Basics of programming in C, C++ or Java, for instance from the lecture Introduction to Informatics 1
Lecture Fundamentals of Algorithms and Data Structures
Grading
To pass the practical course you need to solve enough of the excercise problems on your own and pass an oral examination in the end of the semester. The mark is computed using the quality and amount of problems solved as well as the oral examination.

Problem Sets

General Information
Information Sheet - Judge
Week 1: Introduction
Problem Set - Information about TUMjudge - Survey
Week 2: Minimum Spanning Trees
Problem Set - Further Reading - Survey
Week 3: Shortest Path
Problem Set - Further Reading - Survey
Week 4: Flow
Problem Set - Further Reading - Survey
Week 5: Data Structures: Big Integers/Rationals, Binary Search, Tries
Problem Set - Survey
Week 6: Brute Force
Problem Set - Survey
Week 7: Dynamic Programming
Problem Set - Further reading (Edit Distance) - Further Reading (Cyclic Longest Common Subsequence) - Further Reading (Longest Increasing Subsequence) - Survey
Bonus: GCPC 2015
Next week you may participate in the GCPC 2015. Participating in this contest is absolutely voluntary, but you may get bonus points. You may participate in teams of up to three students. To participate, join the contest at http://icpc.baylor.edu/regionals/finder/german-2015 until 17.06.2015. The contest starts Saturday, 20.06.2015, 11:00 a.m. CET (please be there 30 minutes earlier) at the computer labs and will last for five hours. All information about the contest may be found at http://icpc.tum.de. We will award 5 bonus points for the first two problems solved and two more bonus points for each further problem solved to each team member. You may also team up with students of TUM that are not participating in this course!
Week 8: Number Theory
Problem Set - Survey
Week 9: Geometry
Problem Set - Survey
Week 10: Projective Geometry
Problem Set - Survey
Week 11: Contest
Problem Set - Survey

Description

Programming contests are competitions for solving problems with the help of computer programs. By taking part in these contests one may improve skills in using algorithms and data structures as well as in problem solving, software development and teamwork through fun and games. Important topics in computer science are combined with the fun in programming.

There are plenty of programming contests by now, each of them having a different mode and focus. The excercise problems in this course will be similar to the ones used in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), an international programming contest for students which is run by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since the 1970s. In this contest, groups of up to three students each need to solve eight to ten problems in five hours using one computer only. The Computer Science Department of TUM has been participating in the ICPC with multiple teams for several years. Some sample problems of the German Collegiate Programming Contest (GCPC) 2012 give an impression of the problems we are going to solve in this practical course.

There will be a lecture where we explain algorithms for a new topic each week. During the following week, the participants need to solve problems related to this topic. Solutions, different ideas and remarks regarding the problems will be presented in the next lecture. The problems differ in the level of difficulty: There will be problems asking for straightforward implementations of the presented algorithms as well as harder problems taken from several contests. For submitting and judging the submissions we will use DOMJudge, the system which is used for almost all rounds of the ICPC.

Goals of this course are

a deep understanding of fundamental algorithms and data structures,
getting to know specialized algorithms used in current research,
improved skills in problem solving and problem analysis,
practice in recognizing needed algorithms for given problems on one's own,
improved capacities in teamwork by taking part in team contests,
the application of important mathematical techniques as well as
preparing the participants for programming contests.