CS 261: Optimization and Algorithmic Paradigms (Winter 2020)

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Instructors: Moses Charikar and Ofir Geri

Location and time: Tuesday and Thursday 10:30am – 11:50am, School of Education 128

Teaching assistants: Weiyun (Anna) Ma and Ofir Geri

Please sign up on Piazza for discussions. We monitor Piazza at least daily.

Contact Information: Please use a private post on Piazza to contact the course staff (all or one of us).

Office Hours:

• Moses: Friday 10:00am - 11:00am, Gates 472
• Ofir: Friday 3:00pm - 5:00pm, Gates 459
• Anna: Monday 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Gates 459 (no OH on 1/20, makeup OH on 1/22, 10:00am - 12:00pm, in Gates 459)

Requirements: four problem sets (2/3 of the final grade), in-class final exam (1/3 of the final grade)

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List of Topics (Tentative)

• Maximum flow and matching in graphs
• Linear programming and applications
• Online algorithms, multiplicative weights
• Approximation algorithms
• Other topics (as time allows): distributed algorithms, beyond worst case analysis, fine-grained complexity

Up next (Weeks 3 and 4): Linear programming

Resources for each topic will be posted after lecture.