Your employer is facing the challenge of an application that exhibits poor performance and occa- sionally returns incorrect results. These factors are plaguing your company’s image. You have been assigned the task of redesigning the solution so that it is more efficient and to resolve the issues with incorrect results. Your boss also wants an explanation and presentation on the efficiency of your solution. You wonder, is it possible to make it go faster? What should I present to show that my solution is of high quality and will provide enough detail to allow others to provide construc- tive feedback? Where would you begin? This course provides the foundation for addressing these challenges.

CS412 is a practical study of algorithms and their use in problem solving. Several categories of algorithms will be explored including: divide-and-conquer, greedy, backtracking, network flow and dynamic programming. The classes P and NP are introduced and intractable problems are discussed along with approximation algorithms.

This is a programming intensive course and will involve developing and analyzing algorithms in the Python programming language.