This is a homepage of CS 590 ``Probabilistic Methods in Computer
Science''
In this course we discuss probabilistic and analytic
methods that are often used in designing and analyzing
(randomized) algorithms and data structures.
Donald E. Knuth in ``Randomization and Religion'' confessed:
``If somebody would ask me, what in the last 10 years,
what was the most important change in the study of algorithms I
would have to say that people getting really familiar with
randomized algorithms had to be the winner''.
Following the general precept:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for the day; teach
him to fish and you feed him for his lifetime, we will concentrate on
methodology.
In the first part of the course, we focus
on techniques, and every method
is illustrated by a variety of specific problems that arose from algorithms
and data structures, mostly on strings.
Our choice of algorithms stems from the fact that
there has been a resurgence of interest in algorithms on sequences and
their applications in
computational biology, security, multimedia compression,
and information theory.
This site contains important administrative information,
class announcements, assignments, and handouts.
