Efficient Algorithms and Intractable Problems

CS 170 at UC Berkeley, Fall 2025

Sanjam Garg, John Wright

Lecture: TuTh 2:00pm - 3:30pm, Wheeler 150
Textbook: Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani (DPV)
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Note: This content schedule for Fall 2025 is subject to change.
Week Date Lecture Resources Readings Discussion Homework
1
Thu
8/28

Introduction, Big-O Notation, Recurrence Relations

recording
lecture notes DPV §2.1 , §2.2
2
Tue
9/2

Integer Multiplication, Recurrence Relations, Master Theorom

DPV §2.3 , §2.4 , §2.5
Thu
9/4

Matrix Multiplication, Medians

DPV §2.3 , §2.4 , §2.5
3
Tue
9/9

Divide and Conquer Examples

DPV §2.3 , §2.4 , §2.5
Thu
9/11

Depth First Search, Topological Sort

DPV §3
4
Tue
9/16

Strongly Connected Components

DPV §3
Thu
9/18

Paths in Graphs

DPV §4.1 , §4.2 , §4.3 , §4.4 , §4.5 , §4.6 , §4.7
5
Tue
9/23

Greedy Algorithms (Part I)

DPV §5 , §5.4
Thu
9/25

Greedy Algorithms (Part II)

DPV §5 , §5.4
6
Tue
9/30

Midterm 1 (7 - 9 pm)

Thu
10/2

Dynamic Programming (Part I)

DPV §6
7
Tue
10/7

Dynamic Programming (Part II)

DPV §6
Thu
10/9

Dynamic Programming (Part III)

DPV §6
8
Tue
10/14

Dynamic Programming (Part IV)

DPV §6
Thu
10/16

Linear Programming, Simplex Algorithm

DPV §7.1
9
Tue
10/21

Network Flow, Bipartite Matching

DPV §7.2
Thu
10/23

Duality, Zero-Sum Games

DPV §7.4
10
Tue
10/28

Gradient Descent (Part I)

Thu
10/30

Gradient Descent (Part II)

11
Tue
11/4

Midterm 2 (7 - 9 pm)

Thu
11/6

Reductions, Bipartite Matching, Search Problems

DPV §8.1 , §8.3
12
Tue
11/11

Holiday

Thu
11/13

Reductions, NP-Completeness

DPV §8.2
13
Tue
11/18

Reductions

DPV §9
Thu
11/20

Coping with NP-Completeness (Part I)

DPV §9
14
Tue
11/25

Coping with NP-Completeness (Part II)

DPV §9
Thu
11/27

Thanksgiving

15
Tue
12/2

TBD

Thu
12/4

TBD

16
Tue
12/9

RRR Week

Thu
12/11

RRR Week

17
Tue
12/16

Final Exam (8:00 am - 11:00 am)