CS240 Lecture Notes - Otra, Random-Access Machine, Beak
9 May 2014
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Document Summary
Cs 240 data structures and data management. An algorithm is a step-by-step process for carrying out a set of operations given an arbitrary problem instance. An algorithm solves a problem if, for every instance of the problem, the algorithm nds a valid solution in nite time. A program is an implementation of an algorithm using a speci ed programming language. For each problem we can have several algorithms and for each algorithm we can have several programs (implementations). In practice, given a problem: design an algorithm, assess the correctness of that algorithm, if the algorithm is acceptable, implement it. When determining the e ciency of algorithms, we tend to be primarily concerned with either the runtime or the memory requirements. In this course, we will focus mostly on the runtime. To perform runtime analysis, we may simply implement the algorithm and use some method to determine the end-to-end time of the program.
