Schedule for Second Part of the Course

The Exam

There is only one exam in this course. It is a comprehensive exam covering material presented before spring break. The exam will be given out in class on Tuesday, March 21 and will be due back at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 28.

You may use your class notes and any other notes that you have prepared in advance of the exam. No other materials should be used and no collaboration is permitted. There will be no time limit imposed on the exam, but it will be designed to take approximately 3 to 4 hours.

Student Presentations!

One of the major objectives of this course is to prepare you to learn a challenging topic on your own, synthesize the (probably challenging) literature on this topic, and give a clear oral presentation onthe topic. This is a valuable skill no matter where your career takes you! It is my intention to help you refine these skills in this course.

• An in-class presentation. Normally, a 2-person team will give a 75 minute presentation.
• One or two homework problems assigned to your classmates at the time of your presentation. You will prepare these problems and their solution set. You will grade the submissions as well.

Here are the key dates for the presentations:

• You should begin thinking about your project now. You and your partner should chat with me briefly about your plan and get your topic approved no later than Thursday, March 9.
• A schedule of the student presentations will be posted on the course web site on Friday, March 10.
• You are responsible for scheduling a meeting with me to take place at least one week prior to your talk. At that meeting, you should be prepared with all of the materials for your presentation (mock-ups of slides, blackboard material, and homework problems). You will give the complete presentation and I'll time you and give you feedback. Typically, I'll have some suggestions and may ask you to meet with me a second time before your presentation to go over your "new improved" talk.
• The first presentation will be on Tuesday, March 28 and presentations will occupy the class periods for the remainder of the semester.

Here is the schedule for the talks:

DATE                    PRESENTER(S)                         TOPIC

Tuesday, March 28	Dave Buchfuhrer and Brad Tennis	     Matroid Duals & The Shannon Switching Game

Thursday, March 30      Garrett Heckel and Jon Dodge         Online Algorithms

Tuesday, April 4        Cris Cecka and Chris Erickson        Online Routing

Thursday, April 6	Elisa Celis and Mac Mason            Online Whack-a-Mole

Tuesday, April 11       NO CLASS                     

Thursday, April 13      Topper Kain and Pyry Matikainen      Online Algorithms and Game Theory

Tuesday, April 18       Michael Coupland and John McCullough Adaptive Huffman Coding

Thursday, April 20      Dan Halperin and Susanna Ricco       Cache-Oblivious Algorithms

Tuesday, April 25       Alan Davidson and Reid Howard        Pattern Matching

Thursday, April 27      Esteban Molina-Estolano              Sorting Networks