Instructors:

This semester DSC 40B is taught by Prof. Arya Mazumdar

email: arya@ucsd.edu

TA:

This term there are three TAs for DSC 40B

1. Manasi Agrawal - maagrawa@ucsd.edu

2. Prashant Krishnan Vaidyanathan - pvaidyanathan@ucsd.edu

3. Venkat Krishnamohan - vkrishnamohan@ucsd.edu

Getting Started:

To get started in DSC 40B, you'll need to set up accounts on a couple of websites.

Campuswire

We'll be using Campuswire as our course message board. Campuswire is like Piazza, but unlike Piazza, Campuswire does not sell student data to third parties. You should have received an invitation via email, but if not you should get in touch with a course staff member as soon as possible, as we'll be making all course announcements via Campuswire.

If you have a question about anything to do with the course — if you're stuck on a homework problem, want clarification on the logistics, or just have a general question about data science — you can make a post on Campuswire. We only ask that if your question includes some or all of an answer, please make your post private so that others cannot see it. You can also post anonymously if you would prefer.

Course staff will regularly check Campuswire and try to answer any questions that you have. You're also encouraged to answer a question asked by another student if you feel that you know the answer.

Gradescope

We'll be using Gradescope for homework submission and grading. Most of the assignments will be a mixture of math and coding, and the coding parts are usually autograded via Gradescope., You should have received an email invitation for Gradescope, but if not please let us know as soon as possible (preferably via Campuswire).

Zoom

Some aspects of the course, like office hours and the remote discussion, will be held using Zoom. You should already have an account through UCSD; see the Zoom guide for more help. Note that you will not be expected to have a webcam!

Canvas

We'll use Canvas for the course gradebook and for the exams.

Required Materials

No materials are required for this course; we'll use online video lectures as the main resource, as well as our own course notes prepared by Prof. Justin Eldridge. That said, here are some books that you might find useful.

• Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein; Introduction to Algorithms

• Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, Vazirani; Algorithms

Office Hours:

The Instructors and TA/Graders will be available to answer your questions every week. All times below are PDT.

Mon - 3:00pm - 4:00pm

Wed - 11:00am - 12:00pm

Fri - Prof. Mazumdar -10:00-11:00am

The Zoom link for the Office Hours is https://ucsd.zoom.us/s/91495806888. The Monday and Wednesday OHs will be taken by one of the TAs. The schedule can be found here.

Exams:

There will be two midterm exams to be held on April 28th and May 26th, both Thursdays. There will be no scheduled lectures on those days.

• Midterm 1 covered lectures 1-8.

• Midterm 2 will cover materials of lectures 9-15 (from Hash table to shortest paths in weighted graphs).