Course Announcements

Unofficial final course marks are posted. All copies of the final examination have already been returned to the Faculty of Arts & Science. For any question regarding the final exam, please contact the Office of the Faculty Registrar (room SS-1006).

Next week's office hours: Prof. Pitt will hold office hours M1-3 and T1-3 in SF 4306E; Prof. Braverman will hold office hours M4-6 and T4-6 in BA 3234.

Posted lecture slides for Week 13.

Office hours for François Pitt during the exam period: TR 1:30-2:30 (starting this Thursday 14 April).

Additional information about the final exam has been posted on the "Tests/Exam" page.

Sample solutions, marking scheme, and marks for Assignment 4 have now been posted. The marked assignments will be available for pickup from the box marked "CSC373" in SF 4306 later today.

Last-minute hint for Assignment 4: For those of you still struggling with question 4(c), remember to check out all of the resources online. (Hint: week 10 lecture summary...)

General extension for Assignment 4! Given the end-of-term rush faced by everyone, we have decided to grant a class-wide extension until 6pm on Friday 8 April. Given this general extension, no submission will be accepted after 6pm on Friday.

Reminder: official course evaluations will be held in lecture this week (probably on Friday for section L0101). We hope that you felt you could come to us to discuss any concerns/suggestions you might have had about the course during the term. But whether you did or not, official course evaluations are important so please show up for this week's lectures.

Part II of Assignment 4 has been posted.

Term Test 2 will be returned during this week's tutorials. The marks, sample solutions and marking scheme for the test will also be posted this week.

Assignment 2 will be returned during this Wednesday's lecture. The marks, marking scheme and comments for the assignment will also be posted this week.

Undergraduate research seminar: Professor Sheila McIlraith will speak on "The Semantic Web".
When: Thursday 31 March, 12pm-1pm
Where: BA 1190
Abstract: The Web was designed for human interpretation and use. The Semantic Web is a vision for a next-generation that is unambiguously computer interpretable. This talk examines some of the interesting challenges to realizing the Semantic Web, and in particular where research in Artificial Intelligence can contribute.

General interest announcement. Maryam Tohidi is a Computer Science graduate student who will be conducting her thesis experiments starting in March 2005. For these experiments, she needs a number of undergraduate student participants. Benefits include:

• a chance to contribute to scientific research
• gaining an appreciation of research in the field of HCI
• pizza and pop :)

You can also look at this as an opportunity to talk to a graduate student and get information about graduate school if you are interested. Maryam will be happy to chat with you after the experiment.
The experiment will take roughly about an hour. Your participation is entirely on a volunteer basis. The information collected will remain confidential. Participation in this study will in no way affect your grades or reputation as a student.
For more information, please contact Maryam at mtohidi at cs dot utoronto dot ca.

Assignment 4, Part I has been posted. Part II will be posted early next week.

Assignment 3 was returned during lecture today. For section L0101, unclaimed assignments have been left in the box marked "CSC 373" in SF-4306. The marking scheme and marking comments for the assignment have been posted, and so have the marks.

EVENING section test time. Please note that Term Test 2 will take place starting at 6:10pm and will be followed by the regular lecture, instead of the other way around.

General interest announcement.
New course this summer: Communication Skills for Computer Scientists
Do you want to learn to write more clearly? improve your presentation skills? deal more effectively with other people?
CSC290H, Communication Skills for Computer Scientists, is available this summer. It's a new, exciting, and interactive course for computer scientists focussing on the written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills you will need in your careers. Thursdays 6pm - 9pm.
Here's the full course description: "Targeted instruction and significant practice in the communications required for careers in computer science. The curriculum covers written, oral, and interpersonal communication. Students will hand in short pieces of writing each week, will make oral presentations several times in the semester, and will work together in simulated project meetings and other realistic scenarios of pair and small group interaction."
CSC290H counts towards the Writing Requirement for Computer Science programs.

Error in Solutions for Assignment 3. As pointed out by a few students, there is an error in the solutions to question 3: because there can be up to two 1/3-majority elements, the algorithm needs to return all the possible elements at each call, so that each possibility can be checked. An updated version of the sample solutions has been posted.

Sample solutions for Assignment 3 have been posted.

Remember that Term Test 2 takes place during tutorial next week. It will be closed-book and cover all of divide-and-conquer and network flows.

Graduate School Information Session
Tuesday, March 22, 3-5pm, in BA 1130
This is intended for students applying to graduate school in computer science at UofT or elsewhere, as well as students thinking about it for the future. If you have questions about how to write a Statement of Purpose, or wonder what an admissions committee is looking for, for example, please come.
If you are in third year and thinking of applying next year, please try to come! Application deadlines come very early in the fall, and there are things you can be doing in advance to improve your application.
If you are in first or second year, and think you might be interested in research, it's never to early to start thinking about the possibilities.

Assignment 3 Correction: For Question 3, the definition of "majority element" should be: an element that appears in more than n/2 positions of the array -- not "at least n/2 positions" as stated on the original handout. The same applies to the definition of "1/3-majority element" (an element that appears in more than n/3 positions of the array). An updated handout has been posted.

Assignment 3 Clarification: For Question 2, assume that the array A is unsorted.

Term Test 1 is available for pickup from the box marked "CSC 373" in SF 4306.

Assignment 3 is now posted.

We have posted the marks, sample solutions and marking scheme for Term Test 1.

Assignment 3 will be posted this week. The due date for Assignment 3 will be changed to Wednesday 16 March.

Sample solutions for Assignment 2 have been posted.

Copies of Term Test 1 have been posted. The sample solutions and marking scheme will be posted soon. The marks will also be posted soon: unfortunately, there were some errors in the marking that must be corrected before we can post the marks and return the tests.

Lecture summaries/slides have been posted for Week 7. The readings for Week 8 have also been posted.

Someone pointed out a small typo in the lecture summary for week 6: the sentence that starts with "

Idea:  Let X_0 = x_{n/2} ... x_1 x_0

Idea:  Let X_0 = x_{n/2-1} ... x_1 x_0

Typo in textbook. On page 190, the table shown is incorrect: the entry at index (4,9) should be 0 instead of 1.

Undergraduate research seminar
Professor Charles Rackoff is giving a research presentation for undergrads this week titled "What We Don't Know About Cryptography".
All students are welcome to attend and refreshments will be provided.
When: Thursday, February 24th at 12pm
Where: BA 1190
Abstract: Most of us use cryptography quite often. For example, we use it every time we do online banking or internet shopping. Is any of this in the least secure? We don't know, and these issues relate to deep open questions in computer science.

Part II of Assignment 2 has been posted.

Assignment 1 is available for pickup in a box marked "CSC 373" in room SF 4306, mostly during regular business hours.

Marking comments for Assignment 1 have been posted. The marks for the assignment have also been posted.

EVENING section test time. Please note that Term Test 1 will take place starting at 6:10pm and be followed by the regular lecture, instead of the other way around.

The lecture summary for this week has been updated to include a small example of execution of the Floyd-Warshall algorithm.

Remember that Test 1 will take place during regularly scheduled tutorial next week. Please go to the tutorial room you were assigned. The test will be on all of the material we have covered up until now (greedy algorithms and dynamic programming).

The link for Assignment 2 was left out of the "Assignments" page by mistake; this has been corrected.

We have posted sample solutions and a marking scheme for Assignment 1.

Assignment 2 will be posted in two parts. Part I has now been posted, and Part II will be posted soon.

Assignment 1 Announcement: General extension. Because of the number of people with PEY interviews this week, as well as the fact that we covered dynamic programming at the last minute, we have decided to grant a general extension until Friday 28 January at 4pm. All assignments should be submitted in the CSC 373H drop box in room BA 2220. NO late submission will be accepted.

Computer Science Undergraduate Research Showcase.
Are you interested in a future research opportunity? Would you like to find out what your friends and classmates are up to?
Come to the Computer Science Undergrad Research Showcase on February 2nd at 4pm in BA1190.
Undergraduate students will be giving short presentations on the research they have done in CSC494, CSC491, and summer NSERC projects.
There will be a prize for the Best Presentation and refreshments will be provided.

The lecture summary/slides for Week 3 have been posted.

Office hours for Mark Braverman: Wed. 5-6 in BA 3234.

Posted lecture summaries (for section L0101) and slides (for section L5101) for the first two weeks. Others will be posted at the end of each week. Actual lecture content may vary slightly from the posted summaries/slides.

Posted a link to notes for CSC 364H in the "References" section of the Main Webpage. These notes contain detailed examples of greedy algorithms and dynamic programming.

Assignment 1 Announcement: There was a typographical error on Question 1 in the original handout: the for-loop should start at 2 instead of 1. An updated handout has been posted.

The term test dates have been updated to reflect the change of tutorial time for section L0101. (See the Important Dates on the Main Webpage for details.)

Starting next week (Monday 17 January), tutorials will take place every Monday 2-3 (lectures will take place WF2) for section L0101. The breakdown of tutorial sections has been posted on the Main Webpage. Please attend your assigned tutorial, to help us keep the sections balanced. If you have a problem with your tutorial section, please inform your instructor immediately (it is better to try to solve problems than to ignore them).

I will post lecture summaries for the first two weeks sometime before next week. I will also post textbook readings for each week so that you can prepare for each week ahead of time.

For this week only, tutorial for the day section will take place Friday 2-3 in room MP 202. As soon as we have worked out a breakdown of tutorial sections for next week, I will post an announcement.

Assignment 1 has been posted on the "Assignments" page.

Tutorial sections will be announced early this week.

The date for Term Test 2 will have to be changed for section L0101 (day) because it falls on a day when the University is closed (Good Friday). We will announce the new date as soon as possible.