Boston University - Summer 2025
CAS CS 392 - Competitive Programming I

Course Staff

Name	Office Hours
Prof. Tiago Januario	Google Calendar

Syllabus

This course covers essential algorithms for competing in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) and similar contests. Active involvement in weekly contests is a mandatory component of the course. Topics covered include standard library classes and data structures, competitive programming contest strategies, string manipulation, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, graph algorithms, number theory, computational geometry, and combinatorics.

Schedule

This schedule is subject to change, and likely will, as we progress through the semester.

Lec.	Date	(Tentative) Topics	Reading
01	Thu, May 22	Warm-up IDE, compilers, Online judges	Create your account on: Vjudge Codeforces Kattis
02	Thu, May 29	Two pointers Greedy Complete Search	CSES 8.1 CSES 6 CSES 5 CP4 3, 8, 9
03	Thu, Jun 05	Sliding Window Binary search Dynamic programming	CSES 8.3 CSES 3.3 CSES 7
04	Fri, Jun 06	Prefix sum array Graph traversal Union-find structure	CSES 9.1 CSES 12 CSES 15.2
05	Thu, Jun 12	Sorting Bit representation and operations Bit optimizations: dynamic programming revisited	CSES 3 CSES 10.2 CSES 10.5
06	Fri, Jun 13	Working with numbers Modular arithmetic Prime numbers	CSES 1.3 CSES 1.4 CSES 21.2
07	Fri, Jun 20	Fenwick trees Segment trees	CSES 9.2 CSES 9.3
08	Thu, Jun 26	Final contest	Everything so far

Textbooks

You can support the authors by purchasing the books.

• (CSES) Competitive Programmer’s Handbook by Antti Laaksonen.
• (CP) Competitive Programming Book 4 by Steven Halim and Felix Halim.

Participation, course atmosphere, diversity, and inclusion

• You will get the full participation points if you attend at least 85% of the possible lectures.
• If you end up attending x% of the lectures, where x < 85, you will get x/85 of the points.
• If you require special accommodations for exams or coursework, please send a private message to an instructor and forward any relevant documentation from Disability and Access Services.
• If you are facing unusual circumstances during the semester, please reach out to us early on so that we can find a good arrangement.

Your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let us know ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or for other students.

Grading Rubric

• Your grade will be based on the EMRN rubric.
• The rubric was created by Rodney Stutzman and Kim Race, where it originated as the "EMRF" rubric in a 2004 article in Mathematics Teacher magazine.
• Classwork will consist of:
• Weekly group coding in-person assignments with up to 2 people:
• 7 attendance quizzes - 1 per lecture
• 21 short problems - 3 per lecture
• 21 long problems - 3 per lecture
• 7 debugging tasks - 1 per lecture
• 1 individual in-class contest
• A numerical scale will be used to compute your grade based on the number of completed assignments/category:
• One quizz – up to 1 point, based on correctness
• One lecture you attend – up to 1 point based on arrival and departure times
• One short problem = 1 point, maximum of 2 points per week (noncumulative)
• One long problem = 1 point, maximum of 2 points per week (noncumulative)
• One debug task = 1 point
• One contest – up to 6 points, one per solved problem
• You have up to one week to contact the staff members to request ONE makeup of a missing assignment (except for the contest).