Page for the (old) 2010/2011 edition and archives

Fundamentals of programming and algorithms (INF421)

421

News

I opened a blog to try and improve two-way communication between students and teacher. I know it's almost the end of the course, I'm sorry about this, but better late than never.

Language

Written material (website, slides, notes, exercises and practicals) in English or French. Spoken language: French.

Teaching team

This course takes students from the basic level given by the 1st year course INF311 to an intermediate level, more or less like students out of the INF321 course. This course is offered to students having taken INF311 and is a prerequisite for the more advanced INF431 course.

Course schedule

Courses take place on 9 consecutive fridays from 26th august to 21st october. Lectures are in Amphitheatre Arago from 10:30 to 12:00, and TDs are SI31, SI32, SI33, SI34, from 13:30 to 15:30 (groups 1-4) and from 15:45 to 17:45 (groups 5-7). If you're new to Ecole Polytechnique and don't know your way around the place yet, find every lecture hall and class here.

  1. 26/08/11. Lists and Complexity: slides, for printing and code
  2. 02/09/11. Queues and Bread-First Search: slides, for printing and code
  3. 09/09/11. Stacks and Recursion: slides, for printing and code
  4. 16/09/11. Sorting (this TD will be marked): slides, for printing and code
  5. 23/09/11. Hash tables: slides, for printing and code
  6. 30/09/11. Trees and Depth-First Search: slides, for printing and code
  7. 07/10/11. Balanced trees: slides, for printing and code
  8. 14/10/11. Graphs: slides, for printing and code
  9. 21/10/11. Shortest paths: slides, for printing and code

The TD on 16/9 will be marked ("pâle machine"). It will focus on material from lecture 1 to lecture 4 inclusive (this means you better come to the lectures, specially on 16/9, since you might be tested on it in the afternoon). Examples of past tests and exams can be found in the archives.

Webpage of the TDs

Lecture notes

This is the first year I'm giving this course, and since I think good lecture notes come out of didactical experience, I shall write them up during this and the next few years. For the time being, please refer to last year's polycopié.

Notwithstanding, I am actually writing some lecture notes, which for the moment are nothing but introductory material. I shall not assume you read this, but I encourage you to, and if you do please let me have your feedback.

Books

I mainly base my notes and slides on the following books.

I particularly recommend Mehlhorn and Sanders' book, as (i) it is the main inspiration for the course, and (ii) you can download it for free from either the link above (a draft version) or the single chapters of the final version from the book's web page.

Evaluation

One of the TDs will be evaluated (let T be the mark gained in this test), and there will be an exam ("contrôle classant") at the end of the course (let E be the mark gained in this test). The total mark will be given by

max(E, ¾E + ¼T).
Examples of past tests and exams can be found in the archives.