Part I focuses on elementary data structures, sorting, and searching. Topics include union-find, binary search, stacks, queues, bags, insertion sort, selection sort, shellsort, quicksort, 3-way quicksort, mergesort,heapsort, binary heaps, binary search trees, red-black trees, separate chaining and linear probing hash tables, Graham scan, and kd-trees.

Part II focuses on graph and string-processing algorithms. Topics include depth-first search, breadth-first search, topological sort, Kosaraju-Sharir, Kruskal, Prim, Dijkistra, Bellman-Ford, Ford-Fulkerson, LSD radix sort, MSD radix sort, 3-way radix quicksort, multiway tries, ternary search tries, Knuth-Morris-Pratt, Boyer-Moore, Rabin-Karp, regular expression matching, run-length coding, Huffman coding, LZW compression, and the Burrows-Wheeler transform.

Yes. Our free booksite contains synopses of the text, web exercises, Java implementations of all the algorithms covered (any many more) that are designed for you to be able to download and use with one click, test data, and many other resources.

The two courses are complementary. This one is essentially a programming course that concentrates on developing code; that one is essentially a math course that concentrates on understanding proofs. This course is about learning algorithms in the context of implementing and testing them in practical applications; that one is about learning algorithms in the context of developing mathematical models that help explain why they are efficient. In typical computer science curriculums, a course like this one is taken by first- and second-year students and a course like that one is taken by juniors and seniors.

Yes. This course is for anyone using a computer to address large problems (and therefore needing efficient algorithms). At Princeton, over 25% of all students take the course, including people majoring in engineering, biology, physics, chemistry, economics, and many other fields, not just computer science.

Our central thesis is that algorithms are best understood by implementing and testing them. Our use of Java is essentially expository, and we shy away from exotic features, so we expect you would be able to adapt our code to your favorite language. However, we require that you submit the programming assignments in Java. If you have some experience programming in another language, you might find it worthwhile to learn our programming model by studying our book An Introduction to Programming in Java: An Interdisciplinary Approach and associated free booksite.

Probably not.

No certificates, statements of accomplishment, or other credentials will be awarded in connection with this course.