Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles We're going to get started. Handouts are the by the door if anybody didn't pick one up. My name is Charles Leiserson. I will be lecturing this course this term, Introduction to Algorithms, with Erik Demaine. In addition, this is an SMA course, a Singapore MIT Alliance course which will be run in Singapore by David Hsu. And so all the lectures will be videotaped and made available on the Web for the Singapore students, as well as for MIT students who choose to watch them on the Web. If you have an issue of not wanting to be on the videotape, you should sit in the back row. OK? Otherwise, you will be on it. There is a video recording policy, but it seems like they ran out. If anybody wants to see it, people, if they could just sort of pass them around maybe a little bit, once you're done reading it, or you can come up. I did secure one copy. Before we get into the content of the course, let's briefly go over the course information because there are some administrative things that we sort of have to do. As you can see, this term we have a big staff. Take a look at the handout here. Including this term six TAs, which is two more TAs than we normally get for this course. That means recitations will be particularly small. There is a World Wide Web page, and you should bookmark that and go there regularly because that is where everything will be distributed. Email. You should not be emailing directly to, even though we give you our email addresses, to the individual members of the staff. You should email us generally. And the reason is you will get much faster response. And also, for any communications, generally we like to monitor what the communications are so it's helpful to have emails coming to everybody on the course staff. As I mentioned, we will be doing distance learning this term. And so you can watch lectures online if you choose to do that. I would recommend, for people who have the opportunity to watch, to come live. It's better live. You get to interact. There's an intangible that comes with having it live. In fact, in addition to the videos, I meet weekly with the Singapore students so that they have a live session as well. Prerequisites. The prerequisites for this course are 6.042, which is Math for Computer Science, and 6.001. You basically need discrete mathematics and probability, as well as programming experience to take this course successfully. People do not have that background should not be in the class. We will be checking prerequisites. If you have any questions, please come to talk to us after class. Let's see. Lectures are here. For SMA students, they have the videotapes and they will also have a weekly meeting. Students must attend a one-hour recitation session each week. There will be new material presented in the recitation. Unlike the lectures, they will not be online. Unlike the lectures, there will not be lecture notes distributed for the recitations in general. And, yet, there will be material there that is directly on the exams. And so every term we say oh, when did you cover that? That was in recitation. You missed that one. So, recitations are mandatory. And, in particular, also let me just mention your recitation instructor is the one who assigns your final grade. So we have a grade meeting and keep everybody normal, but your recitation has the final say on your grade. Handouts. Handouts are available on the course Web page. We will not generally, except for this one, first handout, be bringing handouts to class. Textbook is this book, Introduction to Algorithms. MIT students can get it any of the local bookstores, including the MIT Coop. There is also a new online service that provides textbooks. You can also get a discount if you buy it at the MIT Press Bookstore. There is a coupon in the MIT Student Telephone Directory for a discount on MIT Press books. And you can use that to purchase this book at a discount. Course website. This is the course website. It links to the Stellar website, which is where, actually, everything will be kept. And SMA students have their own website. Some students find this course particularly challenges so we will have extra help. We will post weekly office hours on the course website for the TAs. And then as an experiment this term, we are going to offer homework labs for this class. What a homework lab is, is it's a place and a time you can go where other people in the course will go to do homework. And there will be typically two TAs who staff the lab. And so, as you're working on your homework, you can get help from the TAs if you need it. And it's generally a place, we're going to schedule those, and they will be on the course calendar for where it is and when it is that they will be held, but usually Sundays 2:00 to 4:00 pm, or else it will be some evening. I think the first one is an evening, right? Near to when the homework is due. Your best bet is try to do the homework in advance of the homework lab. But then, if you want extra help, if you want to talk over your solutions with people because as we will talk about problem sets you can solve in collaboration with other people in the class. In addition, there are several peer assistance programs. Also the office of Minority Education has an assistance program, and those usually get booked up pretty quickly. If you're interested in those, good idea to make an appointment to get there and get help soon. The homework labs, I hope a lot of people will try that out. We've never done this. I don't know of any other course. Do other people know of courses at MIT that have done this? 6.011 did it, OK. Good. And was it successful in that class? It never went, OK. Good. [LAUGHTER] We will see. If it's not paying off then we will just return to ordinary office hours for those TAs, but I think for some students that is a good opportunity. If you wish to be registered in this course, you must sign up on the course Web page. So, that is requirement one. It must be done today. You will find it difficult to pass the course if you are not in the class. And you should notify your TA if you decide to drop so that we can get you off and stop the mailings, stop the spam. And you should register today before 7:00 PM. And then we're going to email your recitation assignment to you before Noon tomorrow. And if you don't receive this information by Thursday Noon, please send us an email to the course staff generally, not to me individually, saying that you didn't receive your recitation assignment. And so if you haven't received it by Thursday Noon you want to. I think generally they are going to send them out tonight or at least by tomorrow morning. Yeah. OK. SMA students don't have to worry about this. Problem sets. We have nine problem sets that we project will be assigned during the semester. A couple things about problem sets. Homeworks won't generally be accepted, if you have extenuating circumstances you should make prior arrangements with your recitation instructor. In fact, almost all of the administrative stuff, you shouldn't come to me to ask and say can I hand in something late? You should be talking to your recitation instructor. You can read the other things about the form, but let me just mention that there are exercises that should be solved but not handed in as well to give you drill on the material. I highly recommend you doing the exercises. They both test your understanding of the material, and exercises have this way of finding themselves on quizzes. You're often asked to describe algorithms. And here is a little outline of what you can use to describe an algorithm. The grading policy is something that somehow I cover. And always every term there are at least a couple of students who pretend like I never showed them this. If you skip problems it has a nonlinear effect on your grade. Nonlinear, OK? If you don't skip any problems, no effect on your grade. If you skip one problem, a hundredth of a letter grade, we can handle that. But two problems it's a tenth. And, as you see, by the time you have skipped like five letter grades, it is already five problems. This is not problem sets, by the way. This is problems, OK? You're down a third of a letter grade. And if you don't do nine or more, so that's typically about three to four problem sets, you don't pass the class.