CSE 421: "Introduction to Algorithms" (Autumn 2026)
CSE 421: "Introduction to Algorithms" (Autumn 2026)
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*The lecture and section material below is adapted from CSE 421 material by Robbie Weber and Chinmay Nirkhe.
*Slides were created in keynote. So the converted ppt file may have formatting issues.
Lectures
09/30: Logistics; stable matchings (slides: keynote, ppt, pdf)
10/02: More stable matchings (slides: keynote, ppt, pdf)
10/05: Graph traversal; Breadth-First Search (keynote, ppt, pdf)
10/07: BFS, DFS, and applications (bipartiteness testing) (keynote, ppt, pdf)
10/09: DFS and applications (cycle detection, topological sorting)
10/12: Graph modeling; Greedy algorithms (intro and interval scheduling)
10/14: Greedy graph algorithms (minimum spanning trees)
10/16: Greedy graph approximation algorithms (max cut)
10/19: Divide and Conquer (mergesort, 2D closest pair)
10/21: Divide and Conquer (runtimes, Strassen's matrix multiplication)
10/23: Divide and Conquer (Karatsuba's integer multiplication, median finding)
10/26: Divide and Conquer (median/selection finding)
10/28: Dynamic Programming (memoization, edit distance)
10/30: Dynamic Programming (edit distance, knapsack)
11/02: Dynamic Programming (Bellman-Ford)
11/04: Dynamic Programming (Bellman-Ford continued)
11/11: Max Flow and Min Cut (intro)
11/13: Max Flow and Min Cut (Ford-Fulkerson)
11/16: Max Flow and Min Cut (Ford-Fulkerson continued, and Max Flow-Min Cut theorem)
11/18: Max Flow and Min Cut (Faster algorithms, and applications)
11/20: Wrapping up Max Flow & Intro to P, NP, and reductions
11/23: NP-completeness
11/25: More NP-completeness
11/27: No class, Thanksgiving
11/30: More NP-completeness (3-SAT)
12/02: More NP-completeness (Vertex Cover and 3-coloring)
12/04: Linear Programming
12/07: Linear Programming (optimal solutions, and simplex method)
12/09: Linear Programming (simplex method continued, LP approximation of vertex cover)