Teaching

In this course, you will develop basic skills and knowledge to create and reason about efficient algorithms to solve computational problems. To be able to reason about algorithms efficiently we first consider the structure and textual form of formal proofs. We then explore different basic algorithms and data structures for frequently appearing problems, using the proving techniques learned to show their correctness. We consider basic algorithm design techniques, correctness analysis, and efficiency analysis of algorithms.

The field of "algorithms engineering" considers how to implement algorithms and data structures effectively in practice, how to experimentally investigate their performance, and how this performance is influenced by modern computer architectures. In this course you will learn the principles of how to implement algorithms and data structures without significant performance defects.

In many areas of computer science such as robotics, computer graphics, virtual reality, and geographic information systems, it is necessary to store, analyze, and create or manipulate spatial data. This course deals with the algorithmic aspects of these tasks: we study techniques and concepts needed for the design and analysis of geometric algorithms and data structures. Each technique and concept will be illustrated on the basis of a problem arising in one of the application areas mentioned above.

In this course we will cover basic discrete mathematical structures that occur in many contexts in computer science. You will learn the basic skills and knowledge to formally reason about these structures. Among others we will cover relations and ordering, counting arguments, and graphs and trees.

There are many aspects to the study of data structures, and the algorithms that operate upon them. In this course, you will learn the basic skills and knowledge to develop efficient algorithms to solve computational problems and to make informed choices between different solutions for the same problem.

A significant part of today's data is geographic, has a geographic component (is geo-referenced), or benefits from geographic interpretation. To analyze these data requires advanced algorithmic tools. This course takes a data-driven perspective on algorithm design for geographic data.

This course teaches students how data analysis problems can be formulated in precise mathematical terms, how to apply algorithmic techniques to solve the resulting optimization or decision problems, and how to implement the resulting algorithms. We will use an important data-analysis task, namely clustering, as a vehicle. The course will give an overview of different approaches to clustering, starting with evaluation metrics - how can we define what a good clustering looks like - and with a focus on algorithms for computing a clustering. We explore how certain data structures and algorithmic techniques can be used to gain considerable speedups. We will discuss how the curse of dimensionality affects the clustering problem, and discuss dimension-reduction techniques that can be used to mitigate these effects.

In the honors track Competitive Programming and Problem Solving the students will learn advanced techniques to solve algorithmic problems and the skills to efficiently implement such algorithms. These skills will be put to the test by participating in international programming contests. The experienced coaches will guide the students in their training to become top level algorithmic problem solvers, which are highly sought after nowadays by large tech companies.