General Course Information

This special topics course will prepare students for programming contests, such as ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).

During the course, the students will be developing efficient solutions to algorithmic problems and implementing them under time constraints. So they must be very comfortable with one of the programming languages below, design and analysis of basic algorithms, asymptotic notation, and the algorithms taught in an undergraduate algorithms course (most of the material from the CLRS textbook), hence, the 'B’ or better requirement in ICS 311.

Prerequisites

• 'B’ or better in ICS 311 (or equivalent) and

• Fluency in at least one of the following programming languages:

  • Java

  • C

  • C++

Lecture Time & Location

• Fridays 12:30-3pm in POST 319

Instructor

Nodari Sitchinava

• Office: POST 309C

• Office Telephone: (808) 956-3581

• Email: nodari@hawaii.edu (Put “ICS 491” in the subject line.)

• Office Hours: Wednesday 2-3pm (in ICSpace).

Teaching Assistant

Branden Ogata

• Office: POST 314-6

• Email: bsogata@hawaii.edu (Put “ICS 491” in the subject line.)

• Office Hours: Tuesday 2-3pm and Thursday 3-4pm (in ICSpace)

Reading Material

The lecture slides will be posted on the course website. There is no required textbook. However, the following textbook is highly recommended:

• Steven Halim and Felix Halim: Competitive Programming 3, 3rd Edition, Lulu Press, 2014.

The course also heavily relies on the algorithms and data structures taught in ICS 311. Therefore, the textbook used in that class is a useful reference:

• Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein, Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition, The MIT Press, 2009.