Time and Place. MW 3:30-5, WEL 2.256

Professor. Vijaya Ramachandran (vlr"at"cs), TAY 3.152, 471-9554.
Office Hours. Mondays 1:30-2:30 and Wednesdays 10:30-11:30.

TA. Pushpraj Shukla (pushpraj"at"cs).
Office Hours. TBA.

Textbook. Joseph JaJa. Introduction to Parallel Algorithms, Addison-Wesley, 1992.
The textbook will be supplemented with course handouts for more recent material.

Prerequisites. Graduate standing, and a theory algorithms course such as undergraduate CS357 or graduate CS388G.

COURSE OUTLINE. This is a graduate diversity course in a theory thread . We will cover the following topics.  

There will be no programming component to the course.

Course Organization. The course-work will consist of the following:

• Three in-class tests.
• Four in-class quizzes.
• Scribing of class notes.
• In-class problem presentations.
• Three home works.

Grading. The course grade will be based on the following.

• The test with the highest score will contribute 35% and the test with the second highest score will contribute 30% towards the final grade for the course. The lowest-scoring test will not count toward the course grade.
• The quizzes will count for 10% of the course grade: The two top-scoring quizzes will contribute 3% each, and the remaining two quizzes will contribute 2% each.
• Each homework will contribute 5% to the course grade, for a total of 15% of the course grade.
• The class scribe notes will contribute 5% to the course grade, and the class problem will contribute another 5% to the course grade.

Scribing. We will use the scribing system for class notes. Students will sign up to take turns to be scribes for the lectures. The scribe should prepare formatted lecture notes, and distribute to the class on the Blackboard lecture notes discussion group. Students are encouraged to have their notes proofed by the instructor prior to distribution.

The notes should be distributed to the class on the web Blackboard scribing discussion board within a week after the lecture.

In-class problem presentation. Students will take turns in presentating a solution to an assigned problem. In addition to presenting a 10-minute solution in class, each student will post the solution to the assigned problem on the web Blackboard class discussion group.

All solutions should be posted on the web Blackboard within two days of the class presentation. Follow-up discussion on Blackboard by other students is welcome and encouraged.

Homeworks. You will work in pairs for the three homeworks. Only one solution should be submitted for each pair. Please share the writing equally.
Please note that you are responsible for submitting all solutions on time even if your partner is unable to write up their portion of the solutions for any reason. So be in touch and work closely with your partner.

Homework collaboration. Students may discuss the problem sets with others in the class, but solutions must be written up separately by one of the pair. Each problem solution should be accompanied by a statement that lists the individuals with whom the problem was discussed, both within the pair and outside of the pair. If a key idea was obtained from another book or paper (other than the course textbook), then the source of that idea should be cited. If no outside source was consulted, then a statement to this effect should be made.
Note that there is no penalty for discussing with others; you are, in fact, encouraged to do so. But be sure to acknowledge these discussions in your write-up, and also do not copy solutions from others.

Key Dates. The dates for the three tests are October 10, November 7 and December 5.

The dates for the four quizzes are September 17, September 26, October 24, and November 19 .

Please make a note of these dates --- there will be no make-up dates.

Course URL.     http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vlr/f07.388p/index.html

The daily schedule will be periodically updated on the course schedule page, which can be viewed on Blackboard.

Wednesday, November 21. This is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. We will try to move this class to a make-up class earlier in November (outside of class hours) for the benefit of students who wish to travel for Thanksgiving.
Please contact me during the third week of classes if you would like to have this class moved so that the class can be polled for an alternate date and time for the make-up class.