Suggested Course Outline

This text may be used in either a one semester or a two semester course. The course which I teach at Waterloo is a one-semester course that comprises 36 lecture hours on the following topics:

1. Review of the fundamentals of programming in C++ and an overview of object-oriented programming with C++. (Appendix ). [4 lecture hours].
2. Models of the computer, algorithm analysis and asymptotic notation (Chapters  and ). [4 lecture hours].
3. Foundational data structures, abstraction and abstract data types (Chapters  and ). [4 lecture hours].
4. Stacks, queues, ordered lists and sorted lists (Chapters  and ). [3 lecture hours].
5. Hashing, hash tables and scatter tables (Chapter ). [3 lecture hours].
6. Trees and search trees (Chapters  and ). [6 lecture hours].
7. Heaps and priority queues (Chapter ). [3 lecture hours].
8. Algorithm design techniques (Chapter ). [3 lecture hours].
9. Sorting algorithms and sorters (Chapter ). [3 lecture hours].
10. Graphs and graph algorithms (Chapter ). [3 lecture hours].

Depending on the background of students, a course instructor may find it necessary to review features of the C++ language. For example, an understanding of templates is required for the foundational data structures discussed in Chapter . Similarly, students need to understand the workings of classes and inheritance in order to understand the unifying class hierarchy discussed in Chapter .

Copyright © 1997 by Bruno R. Preiss, P.Eng. All rights reserved.