CSCI3160 Design and Analysis of Algorithms (2025 Fall)

Course Instructor: Time and Venues:
Session Time Venue
Lectures Session 1 Wednesday 11:30AM - 1:15PM William M.W. Mong Engineering Building (ERB) LT
Session 2 Thursday 1:30PM - 2:15PM Lady Shaw Building (LSB) LT1
Tutorials T01 Thursday 9:30AM - 10:15AM William M.W. Mong Engineering Building (ERB) 407
T02 Thursday 10:30AM - 11:15AM Lady Shaw Building (LSB) C4
T03 Thursday 4:30PM - 5:15PM Y. C. Liang Hall (LHC) 104
T04 Thursday 5:30PM - 6:15PM William M.W. Mong Engineering Building (ERB) 803
Teaching Assistants:
Name Office Hour Room Email
Xingyu CUI Mon. 10:30am - 11:30am SHB 913 xycui24 [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk
Ziqing GUO Wed. 10:30am - 11:30am SHB 1004 zqguo25 [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk
Chenya SUN Mon. 2:30pm - 3:30pm SHB 1004 cysun25 [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk
Sipeng SUN Wed. 3:30pm - 4:30pm SHB 121 1155231337 [at] link.cuhk.edu.hk
Zhenxuan XIE Fri. 2:30pm - 3:30pm SHB 913 zxxie24 [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk
Wenhui ZHANG Tue. 10:30am - 11:30am SHB 1004 whzhang25 [at] cse.cuhk.edu.hk

Grading Scheme

Please refer to pages 4 through 6 of the Logistics slides. The following presents the regular and special exercises mentioned therein:
  • Regular Exercises: to be determined...
  • Special Exercises: to be determined...

Textbooks

  • [CLRS] – Introduction to Algorithms (4th edition), by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein.
    (E-book version available through this link from CUHK library (login required using your CUHK account)
  • [DPV] – Algorithms, by Sanjoy Dasgupta, Christos Papadimitriou, and Umesh Vazirani

Weekly Schedule

Acknowledgement: The slides herein are primarily based on materials prepared by Prof. Yufei Tao (please refer to Prof. Tao's version from 2024 Fall for the original content). Some modifications have been made to better align with this year's teaching progress, incorporating student feedback, in-class interactions, and my own teaching style and research perspective.

Week Date Lecture Topics and Slides Supplementary Reading Tutorial Topics and Slides
Week 1 2025-09-03 Logistics, the RAM model, Efficiency Measurement Goemans' notes on Chernoff Bounds Growth of Functions
2025-09-04 Three Basic Techniques None
Week 2 2025-09-10 TBD TBD TBD
2025-09-11 TBD TBD
Week 3 2025-09-17 TBD TBD TBD
2025-09-18 TBD TBD
Week 4 2025-09-24 TBD TBD TBD
2025-09-25 TBD TBD
Week 5 2025-10-01 Class cancelled due to National Day N.A. TBD
2025-10-02 TBD TBD
Week 6 2025-10-08 TBD TBD TBD
2025-10-09 TBD TBD
Week 7 2025-10-15 TBD TBD TBD
2025-10-16 TBD TBD
Week 8 2025-10-22 Midterm (tentative) N.A. TBD
2025-10-23 TBD TBD
Week 9 2025-10-29 Class cancelled due to Chung Yeung Festival N.A. TBD
2025-10-30 TBD TBD
Week 10 2025-11-05 TBD TBD Class cancelled due to the 95th Congregation
2025-11-06 Class cancelled due to the 95th Congregation N.A.
Week 11 2025-11-12 TBD TBD TBD
2025-11-13 TBD TBD
Week 12 2025-11-19 TBD TBD TBD
2025-11-20 TBD TBD
Week 13 2025-11-26 TBD TBD TBD
2025-11-27 TBD TBD

Additional Information

Course Description: In this course, we will (i) introduce provably efficient algorithms for solving a set of classic problems that are frequently encountered in practice, (ii) extract from those algorithms the generic techniques that can be deployed to solve many other problems with strong performance guarantees, and (iii) study NP-hard/complete problems (that is, problems of which no polynomial time algorithms are known) and their approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems.

Use of AI tools: This course follows "Approach 2 – Use only with prior permission" according to the University's policy on the use of AI tools. In particular, the use of AI tools is prohibited in all assessment-related components (including quizzes, the midterm, and the final exam). However, students are permitted to use AI tools for non-assessed learning activities, such as practicing exercise problems that do not count toward the final grade.