CSC263H -- Data Structures and Analysis

Winter 2010

Index of this document

Contact information and meeting times

Instructor:  Sam Toueg.
Office hours:  Friday 1 - 3 pm
Office:  SF 2304C (St. George campus)
Telephone:  416-946-3510 
Email:  sam@cs.toronto.edu
TA's: Siavosh Benabbas, Hossein Bokharaei, Laurent Charlin, Gabriel Chow, George Dahl, Akitoshi Kawamura, Vladimir Yanovsky.

Lecture times and locations:
Tutorial times and locations: There will be a tutorial the first week of class.
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Course content

Course goals:   Data structures are ways of organising the data involved in computation, suitable for representation in and manipulation by computers.  Algorithms are precisely stated, general problem solving methods.  Data structures and algorithms are central to computer science.  They are also integrally related: neither can be studied fruitfully without knowledge of the other. This course has two goals: First, to survey several important data structures and algorithms; and second, to introduce the basic tools and techniques for the analysis of algorithms and data structures.

Prerequisite:  CSC207H1/270H1, CSC236H1/238H1/CSC240H1; STA247H1/STA255H1/STA257H1; CGPA 1.5/enrolment in a CSC subject POSt.

Important Note: The prerequisite requirement is strictly enforced in this course. If you do not satisfy it, you must contact the instructor and submit a petition for a waiver within the first week of class. Your petition should include the following information: your full name and student number, the specific prerequisite that you are requesting a waiver for, the reason for the request, and supporting documentation showing that you know the material covered by the prerequisite that you would like to be waived. This should include a recent printout of your academic transcript.

Required Textbook:   Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd edition, by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein; MIT press and McGraw-Hill, 2009.

Calendar of important course-related events:

Speak, then, and tell everything. For, it comforts those in pain
To know before hand all the agony they still must bear.

--Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Date Event
Week of January 4
 First week of class
Thursday, January 14
 Assignment 1 handed out
Thursday,  January 28
 Assignment 1 due and Assignment 2 handed out
Thursday, February 11
 Assignment 2 due
Thursday, February 25
 Midterm exam (8 pm to 9 pm in the evening)

Assignment 3 handed out
Thursday, March 11
 Assignment 3 due and Assignment 4 handed out
Thursday, April 1
 Assignment 4 due 


Midterm Exam:

Bring  your Student Id card

Material covered: All the material that we covered in class, in the tutorials, in the reading assignments, and in the homeworks, up to and including the last week of class before the exam.

Aids Allowed: None.

Time and location: Thursday, February 25, evening at 20:00 (sharp!) -21:00, at TBA.
            Please try to come at least 5-10 minutes before 8pm,
            so that we can pre-distribute the exam and then start it at 8pm sharp.

Notice to students in the Monday-Wednesday class:

Students who take the morning class and have unresolvable course conflict
with the timing above can take the midterm from 21:00 to 22:00 instead,
on the same day (i.e., Thursday, February 25).

If you want to take the delayed exam session from 21:00 to 22:00,
you must register for it by e-mailing me your name, student number,
and the name and time of the conflicting course. The dealine for
registration is Friday, February 5.

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Course policies

Course evaluation:   There will be four homeworks, a midterm exam and a final exam. The relative weights of these components towards the final mark are shown in the table below:

Homework 40% (10% each)
Midterm 15%
Final 45%

Important note: A mark of at least 40% on the final exam is necessary to pass the course.  Repeated differently:  If you receive less than 40% on the final exam you automatically fail the course, regardless of how well you have done on homeworks or the midterm exam.

Homework  collaboration policy:   In each homework you may collaborate with at most one other student who is currently taking one of the two sections of CSC263H taught by Sam Toueg. If you collaborate with another student on a homework, you and your partner must submit only one copy of your solution (in this case, write both of your names on the cover sheet of the pencil-and-paper part of the assignment, and also on the header of the program file that you submit). The solution will be graded in the usual way and both partners will receive the same mark. Collaboration involving more than two students is not allowed.

For help with your homework you may consult only the instructor, TAs, your homework partner (if you have one), your textbook and your class notes. You may not consult any other source.

Homework submission:  Every homework can consist of: (1) a number of "pencil-and-paper" questions (whose solution involves no programming and can be handwritten or typed), (2) some "programming" questions (whose solution will involve some amount of programming), or (3) a combination of both.  All the parts of each homework are due by 5:30pm sharp on the homework due date (usually a Thursday).
Homework return: Each graded homework (the "pencil-and-paper" part) will be returned to you at the tutorial classrom that you write on the cover page of your homework. Graded homework that is not picked up at the tutorials can  be picked up from Elizabeth Ribeiro at SF2301D.

Late homework policy:  No late homeworks will be accepted. The only exception to this rule is described in  our  Policy on Special Consideration . If you miss a homework deadline for a reason that we consider valid, we will use the average mark that you achieved in other homeworks as your mark for the missed homework.

Remarking policy:   If your request concerns a simple addition error, see the instructor. To make any other kind of remarking request, you must fill this form , attach it to your homework assignment or test, and give it to the instructor of the course no later than one week from the date the marked assignment or test was made available to the class.  Remarking requests made after this deadline will not be accepted.

A remarking request can cause the overall mark to stay the same, increase or decrease: we may re-examine every question of the homework and if new mistakes are found they can also change the marking up or down accordingly. Please submit a remarking request only if: (a) you have read and completely understood our posted solution set, and (b) you still think that your solution is correct and was mistakenly marked as incorrect. We rarely if ever accept remarking requests of the type ``yes, my solution is not correct, but I think you took off too many marks for this mistake'': The marking scheme was decided and applied as uniformly as possible to all students.
Missed midterm test policy:    If you miss the midtermhttps://www.cdf.toronto.edu/students/ test due to a medical or other serious emergency, get in touch with your instructor immediately and follow our Policy on Special Consideration .  There will be no make-up test, but if we consider your reason for missing the test to be valid, we will use your final examination mark to compute your mark for the missed midterm test.

Attendance in tutorials:  Attendance in tutorials is as mandatory as attendance in lectures. In neither case is formal attendance actually taken. However, there will be new material that is presented only in tutorials and not discussed in the lectures for which you are responsible and in which you may be tested in homeworks or exams.

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Announcements

In this space we will post announcements related to the course. Please check this space frequently (at least 3 or 4 times a week).

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Handouts and Homeworks

In this space we will make available course material, homeworks and solutions.

To view some of these handouts you will need access to a postscript previewer. If your machine does not have the required software, you can allegedly download it for free by following this link.

If you have any questions about the programming question of a homework, please e-mail them directly to the teaching assistant who is in charge of the programming questions in this course, at: csc263ta1_w2010@cs.toronto.edu

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