Official website: https://cadmo.ethz.ch/education/lectures/HS21/DA/index.html

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• General Information
• Questions Policy
• Contact Info
• Homework Information
• Peer Grading Information
• Further Material
  • During the Semester
  • For Exam Preparation
• Exam Notes

General Information

• Class takes places in CHN D42 on Mondays from 9:15 until 12:00 (but will will end earlier if we finish earlier)
• Attendance not required, but please hand in your solutions and do the peer grading if you want to obtain bonus points.
• If there is anything that is unclear from the lecture or my exercise class please send me a quick email so I can cover it in the next exercise session.
• If you are sick, you can join the online group of Vedran Mihal but keep in mind to still hand in all your solutions to me.

Questions Policy

Please ask questions; do not hesitate! How can you ask them?

• ask in class
• send me an email (I will likely post your questions on moodle but in anonymized form such that other students can benefit from this as well)
• Any general questions regarding the theory sheets can be sent to organisation.ad@lists.inf.ethz.ch.

Contact Info

• My email is zdavid@student.ethz.ch

{% comment %} ## Homework Information

Every week on Monday a new exercise sheet is released which you should take a look at in groups of 2-3 people (which are assigned by me). The exercises that give bonus points are indicated on the sheet. Note that per group you only hand in one solution and not one solution per team member!

Handing-in the homework is a bit more complicated this semester due to the pandemic. We will need electronic and printed copies of all your homework. Hence, please send me your homework by email to zdavid@student.ethz.ch with the subject line AD-HW at latest by 9:15 on Mondays. It would be great if you could also bring a printed version to class, otherwise I will print them in the break. If you also bring a printed version please use the subject line AD-HW-P instead so I know which ones I will have to print and which ones I don’t.

Peer Grading Information

In the last hour of the exercise session your team will be given another teams exercise sheet and will be peer-grading the exercises that give bonus points. If this is done well, your team will be rewarded with another bonus point. Ideally this is done entirely in class, but if not you have time until 23:59 of the same Monday (i.e. the same day). {% endcomment %}

Further Material

During the Semester

• Algorithms book Especially the DP exercise problems are great.
• AVL tree visualizer to gain some intuition
• Dave’s algorithms collection a long list of implementations of algorithms (blatant self advert). I used this to practice for the exam.
• Video DP Examples I learned with those.
• Introduction to Algorithms great book for reference! But only for reference! I think you can get a PDF via ETH.

For Exam Preparation

• VIS exam collection Start early so you know what to expect.
• Old programming assignments can be found on the websites of previous years (incl. solutions) - pre CodeExpert times
  • 2017
  • 2018

Exam Notes

The following is an incomplete list of tips for the exam. They might seem obvious but I believe that following them should make studying a bit more efficient. Though they might not work for everyone!

• The programming part is a significant part of the exam - make sure you don’t just look at the theory but also invest time into practicing solving algorithmic problems in Java. This practice is also useful for the EProg exam.
• Take a look at old exams, not just right before the exam but early in your revision process so you know what to expect.
• Don’t look at solutions while solving the exercises, they might seem easy when you see the solution but in the exam you must come up with your own solution.
• Problems such as AVL trees, BFS/DFS, spanning tree algorithms, sorting are free points. Make sure you know them.

Let me know by mail if there is anything wrong or if you have any feedback!