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

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

TA. Thomas Finsterbusch (tfinster"at"@cs)
Office Hour. 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 tests (two in-class tests, and a final exam)
• Four in-class mini-tests
• two home works
• Attendance and class participation

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

• 50% for the two in-class tests and final exam. The final exam will be viewed as the third test. The test with the lowest score will be worth 10% and the two highest scoring tests will each be worth 20%.
• 15% for the mini-tests. There will be four mini-tests during the semester. Each will take place during the last 15 minutes on the designated class date. The score for the lowest scoring mini-test will be dropped, and each of the remaining mini-tests will be worth 5% each.
• 12% for the home-works. There will be two home-works, and each homework will contribute 6% to the course grade.
• 15% for a class project.
• 8% for class participation. Class attendance and class participation will contribute 8% to the course grade.

Tests and Final Exam. All three are open book and you can consult your textbook, class handouts, and your personal notes.

The first test will be on all material covered until the date of the test, and the second test will be on all material until the date of the test, and not covered for the first test.
The final exam is cumulative, and will cover the entire semester's material.

At least half of each in-class test and the final exam will be based closely on material covered in class and in the homework problems.

Mini-tests. The mini-tests are closed-book. They will examine your understanding of the course material, and will be scheduled during the last 15 minutes of the class.

Class-project. This will involve an in-depth study of a topic related to the course. The project will be evaluated based on a report and/or a class presentation. More details will be provided after the first few classes.

Blackboard. Course material will be posted on Blackboard, which is accessible through UTDirect. Any important messages for the the class will be sent through Blackboard, so please monitor messages sent to your UT email address.

There is a discussion board on Blackboard, and students are encouraged to post queries about class material there. Feel free to post comments and responses to queries, and note that useful participation on the discussion board will contribute towards your class participation score. This discussion board will also be monitored by your TA, who will post comments and responses as needed.

Please reserve your email messages to the instructor and TA for matters that concern only you. For queries relating to class material, please post to the discussion board so that everyone can benefit from the query and the responses.

Homeworks. Homeworks are due by noon on the designated date in the drop box on Taylor breeze-way. Late homeworks will not be graded.

You will work in pairs on the homeworks. In a pair homework, 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.

Homework grading. In this course, you will grade each others' homeworks, and your overall grade for the homework will include both your performance on the homework and on the quality of your grading.

Key Dates. The dates for the three tests are October 7 and November 18, 3:30-5 p.m. and December 11, 7-10 p.m..

The dates for the four mini-tests are September 9, September 30, October 28, and November 30.

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

Course URL.     http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vlr/f09.388p/index.html

The daily schedule will be periodically updated on the course schedule page: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vlr/f09.388p/sched.html

Wednesday, November 25. This is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. We will try to move this class to an alternate date for the benefit of students who wish to travel for Thanksgiving.

Suggested alternate class date: Friday, November 6, 3:30-5 p.m. or an earlier date.