Contest foundations and complexity
Judge workflow, reliable I/O, testing, debugging, implementation hygiene, and reading constraints.
Fall 2026 · Thirteen Mondays
Course Schedule
Mondays, 7:00–9:30 PM
451 Computer Science Building
Arrays, strings, and scanning patterns
Sorting, prefix sums, two pointers, sliding windows, and binary search—the core of many interviews and early contest problems.
Core data structures and greedy methods
Hashing, stacks, queues, heaps, intervals, exchange arguments, and binary search on the answer.
Trees and graph traversal
BFS, DFS, connected components, topological ordering, state graphs, and interview-style tree reasoning.
Shortest paths, disjoint sets, and spanning trees
Dijkstra, Bellman–Ford, union-find, minimum spanning trees, and choosing the right graph model.
Dynamic programming I
State design, transitions, base cases, reconstruction, knapsack, and sequence patterns.
Dynamic programming II
Bitmask, DAG, and tree DP, with emphasis on recognizing states from regional problem constraints.
No class
Academic holiday.
Range queries and advanced data structures
Fenwick trees, segment trees, coordinate compression, offline queries, and contest-ready templates.
Strings, number theory, and combinatorics
Prefix function, hashing, tries, gcd, sieve, modular arithmetic, counting, and probability.
Flow and bipartite matching
Recognizing reductions, implementing a dependable template, and solving common regional-level models.
Geometry and regional contest strategy
Orientation, intersections, numerical care, problem triage, team roles, and a regional-style practice set.
Regional upsolve and NAC bridge
Repair missed regional problems and identify the advanced techniques, speed, and team habits needed for NAC.
NAC-style team simulation and closing
Team contest, solution clinic, individual explanation, and a concrete next training plan.
Topics remain tentative and may move with the contest calendar and the pace of the class. CourseWorks contains the current assignments and deadlines.