Instructor: Pat Morin, 5177 HP, morin@scs.carleton.ca
About the Course
This is the home page for the graduate course Advanced Data Structures (formerly Topics in Data Structures) taught by Pat Morin in the School of Computer Science at Carleton University.
This course is about simple and easy to understand methods of data structure design and analysis that lead to efficient data structures for a variety of problems. The examples we use are selected because of their elegance and simplicity.
The course consists of three assignments, a final project, and a contribution to public knowledge. The final project is a theory or implementation project that students should choose and discuss with the instructor early in the semester. The contribution to public knowledge is a contribution to Wikipedia that adds information abouft one of the topics discussed in class or found while researching for the project.
Students in this graduate course are expected to have a background in algorithms and data structures. Assignments will require that students solve algorithmic and data structure problems and clearly explain their solutions in written english.
Learning Modality
Content for this course is delivered simultaneously in class and online via Zoom. Students who want to attend in-person can do so. Others can join via Zoom. The Zoom recordings will also be made available for offline viewing.
Notice: Today, Thursday December 2nd, there will be no online or in-person lecture.
Students joining over Zoom should use this link. This meeting has a waiting room. Before joining please make sure that you have a recognizable screen name, otherwise I may not let you in.
Important Dates
Due dates for assignments, contribution to knowledge, and the final project will be posted here.
- Assignment 2 is due on Tuesday November 9, before class. Please email me a single PDF file containing your solutions.
- Assignment 1 is due on Tuesday October 12, before class.
- Classes on Nov 23, 25, 30, and Dec 3 will be online only.
Assignments
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Assignment 2 is now available.
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Assignment 1 is now available. This assignment covers material from lectures 1–6. I recommend that you read the assignment as soon as possible so that you can keep the questions in mind when the relevant material is discussed in class.
More assignments will be posted here as they become available.
Please note the following rules and requirements about assignments:
- Late assignments will not be accepted
- Each assignments should be submitted to me as a single PDF file by email
- I will not respond to emails sent shortly before or after assignment deadlines asking for exceptions to the preceding two rules.
- You can type your solutions, or write them by hand and scan them (for example, using a scan app on your phone or using a real scanner).
- Solutions written-up in LaTeX are preferred, but not strictly required. In case you want to learn LaTeX, here is a tutorial. Learning LaTeX is a useful exercise, since many programs (including Microsoft Word) now use LaTeX for typesetting formulas.
Academic Integrity (New—Please Read)
As of 2020, there are new penalties in place for academic integrity violations. These will be issued by the Associate Dean (Undergraduate Affairs) of Science to students who copy, in whole or in part, work they submit for assignments.
- First offence: F in the course
- Second offence: One-year suspension from program
- Third offence: Expulsion from the University
These are standard penalties. More-severe penalties will be applied in cases of egregious offences. Failure to inform yourself of the expectations regarding academic integrity is not a valid excuse for violations of the policy. When in doubt, ASK your instructor or TA.
More information can be found at the ODS website
Grading Scheme
| Class participation | 10% |
| Assignment 1 | 15% |
| Assignment 2 | 15% |
| Assignment 3 | 15% |
| Contribution to public knowledge | 15% |
| Final project | 30% |
| Total | 100% |
Accommodation Statement
Carleton University is committed to providing access to the educational experience in order to promote academic accessibility for all individuals. Here is information on how to apply for academic accommodation.
Lecture topics
The following schedule is from the Winter 2014 offering of COMP5408. Dates, videos, and topics will be updated as the course progresses. In case I'm slow uploading or a link here is broken, you can find these videos on my YouTube channel.
- Lectures 1 & 2 (treaps): also see these alternative notes on treaps
- Sep 9: Records, random binary search trees, quicksort chalkboard photo
- Sep 14: Treaps
- Sep 9: Records, random binary search trees, quicksort chalkboard photo
- Lecture 3 (iterated search and fractional cascading)
- Sep 16: Fractional cascading
- Sep 16: Fractional cascading
- Lectures 4 (persistence)
- Sep 21: Solving next-element search (point location) using persistence
- Sep 21: Solving next-element search (point location) using persistence
- Lectures 5 & 6 (entropy)
- Sep 23: Entropy, probability splitting, and doubly-exponential series
- Sep 28: Working set structure and MTF compression
- Sep 23: Entropy, probability splitting, and doubly-exponential series
- Lecture 7 (queaps)
- Sep 30: Queaps
- Sep 30: Queaps
- Lecture 8 (van Emde Boas trees)
- Oct 5: van Emde Boas trees
- Oct 5: van Emde Boas trees
- Lecture 9 (x-fast and y-fast tries)
- Oct 7: Binary tries, X-fast tries and y-fast tries
- Oct 7: Binary tries, X-fast tries and y-fast tries
- Lecture 10 (Lowest-common ancestor data structures)
- Oct 12: Lowest common ancestor data structures
- Oct 12: Lowest common ancestor data structures
- Lecture 11 (Level-ancestor data structures)
- Oct 14: Level ancestor data structures
- Oct 14: Level ancestor data structures
- Lecture 12 (dynamic partial sums and cell-probe lower-bounds)
- Oct 19: Dynamic partial sums
- Oct 19: Dynamic partial sums
- Lecture 13, 14, and 15 (data structures for strings)
- Oct 21: C-strings, P-strings, ternary tries, tries, Patricia tries
- Nov 2: Assignment 1 Review
- Nov 4: Suffix arrays and suffix trees
- sa.py
- Nov 9: LCP arrays
- Oct 21: C-strings, P-strings, ternary tries, tries, Patricia tries
- Lecture 16 (universal hashing and dynamic perfect hashing)
- Nov 11: universal hashing and perfect hashing
- Nov 11: universal hashing and perfect hashing
- Lecture 17 (cuckoo hashing and retrieval-only maps analyzed using encoding arguments)
- Nov 16: cuckoo hashing and retrieval-only dictionaries
- Nov 16: cuckoo hashing and retrieval-only dictionaries
- Lecture 18 (the planar separator theorem and distance oracles)
- Nov 18: distance labelling, planar separators, and distance oracles
-Lectures 19 & 20 (splay trees) - Nov 23: Splay trees I
- Nov 25: Splay trees II
- Nov 18: distance labelling, planar separators, and distance oracles
- Lecture 21 (external memory)
- Nov 30: External memory and cache-oblivious B-trees
- Nov 30: External memory and cache-oblivious B-trees
- Lectures 22 & 23 tripod decomposition of planar graphs
- Dec 7: The tripod decomposition lemma
- Dec 9: Tripod decompositions in $O(n\log n)$ time
- Dec 7: The tripod decomposition lemma
