Advanced Data Structures

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0200

Organizational matters Link to heading

Lectures:

Grade:

80% oral exam, 20 minutes
20% programming project
- Details coming a few weeks
- Requires registration

This year’s materials:

The course page: ae.iti.kit.edu/english/5028.php
Ragnar’s blog: curiouscoding.nl/teaching
- Lecture notes and/or slides available shortly before the lecture

Previously taught by Florian Kurpicz:

Related MIT Advanced Data Structures course by Erik Demaine:

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:00:00 +0200

We want to design fast algorithms, but when is an algorithm fast?

Implement it, and measure the time.
- Extrapolate experiments to predict performance on larger \(n\).
- May or may not give understanding.
- Does not provide lower bounds.
Analyse exactly what happens on the CPU.
- Unwieldy; they are massive black boxes.
Instead: use a simplified abstract model of the CPU.
- Allows exact lower and upper bounds.

Big-\(O\), or \(\mathcal O\) notation relates the asymptotic growth of two abstract functions to each other.