CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
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CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
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Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#2Wish the videos were public too!
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#3> Zero hits for "hardware".
Are there algorithm courses that take into account how hardware affects algorithms? For example with databases, you have implement theoretically inefficient algorithms which are faster in practice (mostly because they use sequential access).
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#4This seems like a great course. What level is it? Is this a first year course at Stanford?
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#5Very neat. They write:
> In this course, we’ll be looking for the following trifecta: (i) ideas that are non-obvious, even to the well-trained computer scientist, so that we’re not wasting your time; (ii) conceptually simple — realistically, these are the only ideas that you might remember a year or more from now, when you’re a start-up founder, senior software engineer, PhD student, etc. (iii) fundamental, meaning that there is some chance that the idea will prove useful to you in the future.
In the first lesson, they discuss consistent hashing, and they seem to have achieved their goals.
ETA: Must include this anecdote on the history of the algorithm:
1. 1997: The implementation of consistent hashing given in this lecture first appeared in a research paper in STOC (“Symposium on the Theory of Computing”) [...] Ironically, the paper had previously been rejected from a theoretical computer science conference because at least one reviewer felt that “it had no hope of being practical.”
2. 1998: Akamai is founded.
3. March 31, 1999: A trailer for “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” is released online, with Apple the exclusive official distributor. apple.com goes down almost immediately due to the overwhelming number of download requests. For a good part of the day, the only place to watch (an unauthorized copy?) of the trailer is via Akamai’s Web caches. This put Akamai on the map.
4. April 1, 1999: Steve Jobs, having noticed Akamai’s performance the day before, calls Akamai’s President Paul Sagan to talk. Sagan hangs up on Jobs, thinking it’s an April Fool’s prank by one of the co-founders, Danny Lewin or Tom Leighton.
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#6This seems like a great course. What level is it? Is this a first year course at Stanford?
Approx 4th year CS.
It presupposes the basics of CS (such as hashing) and mathematics (such as some linear algebra). The prerequisites are CS107 (Computer Organization & Systems) and CS161 (Design and Analysis of Algorithms), which have prerequisites in turn.
The lecturers write:
> We welcome all comers — there’s a zillion courses you could be taking, and we’ll be happy and flattered if you decide to take this one. That said, to prepare a coherent lecture, it’s helpful to have a target audience in mind. We view the canonical student in the class as a senior-year computer science major. As you can see in this lecture, we assume a certain degree of “computer science maturity,” taking for granted that you know and care about concepts like caching, hashing, balanced search trees, and so on. We also assume sufficient programming maturity to translate the high-level descriptions given in lecture to working implementations.
> Our ambition is for this to be the coolest computer science course you’ve ever taken. Seriously!
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#7Looks really good.
Interesting to me is that a lot of the material you could also find in a theoretical machine learning course or in an applied mathematics course. Before seeing the syllabus I was expecting more on streaming algorithms, randomized algoriths, etc. In my experience most Computer Science students get a bit freaked out when, e.g., concentration inequalities enter the scene.
"Nothing I learned in CS has an application to industry programming" is a regular complaint in discussion on education here and elsewhere. This is a good course to point to for people who have this very limited view on CS.
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#8Wish the videos were public too!
My (heretical?) opinion is that videos are a waste of time compared to text for the majority of content and the majority of people. There are some ideas that can be very nicely visualized and some people (e.g. dyslexics, non-native speakers) who struggle with text. For the rest I think text is better.
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#9Wish the videos were public too!
My (heretical?) opinion is that videos are a waste of time compared to text for the majority of content and the majority of people. There are some ideas that can be very nicely visualized and some people (e.g. dyslexics, non-native speakers) who struggle with text. For the rest I think text is better.
I find videos terrible for learning on their own. But combined with taking notes, reviewing them after, and using them to kick off a bit of reading or (better) experimentation, they can be an invaluable part of the learning process.
Much like traditional lectures, in fact.
Re: CS 168: The Modern Algorithmic Toolbox
#10> Zero hits for "hardware". Are there algorithm courses that take into account how hardware affects algorithms? For example with databases, you have implement theoretically inefficient algorithms which are faster in practice (mostly because they use sequential access).
The problem with accounting for hardware, is which hardware do you account for? If you really want to get into the performance optimization weeds you end up relying on e.g. specific characteristics of a vendor's CPU. The Mechanical Sympathy blog had posts that do this, and the problem with this is it doesn't generalize. Hardware changes (e.g. SSDs have different performance characteristics compared to spinning disks) and you can even design hardware to efficiently implement particular algorithms.
That said, there are areas within algorithms that do look at optimizing for typical hardware. E.g. cache oblivious algorithms are designed to take advantage of caches as found in modern CPUs.