This unit can be informative, but the lectures are incredibly dull. Covers a lot of content that also appears in mathematics units on OperationsResearch, eg. MinimumSpanningTrees, GraphTheory, the TravellingSalesmanProblem.
Unit is conducted in Java. Assessment in 2007 was a combination of tutorial marks, an assignment and the exam. The assignment is done in groups and involves a giant report, as well as somewhat difficult algorithms. Do not leave lots of PrintfDebugging in your assignment, else you will be failed. 2007's assignment required pairs of students to solve problems from past ACM programming competitions as well as an individual research report. The 2010 assignment was to write code to produce a Voronoi tessellation or Delaunay triangulation.
Opinions are split over the textbook. Some find it to be mildly useful whereas others have found it extremely helpful. There is a lot of material not in the course that is covered by the text book.
Although the unit is hard it covers a lot of practical algorithms and skills that will be useful in programming.
Has been taught by DuHuynh and TimFrench.
