Foundations of informatics - a bridging course

This course is not listed in Aachen Campus and in Bonn Basis as Foundations of Informatics: a bridging course and Foundations of Informatics.

Responsible

Prof. Dr. Joachim von zur Gathen
Prof. Dr. Berthold Vöcking

Lecture

Michael Nüsken
Konstantin Ziegler
Thomas Noll
Walter Unger

Time & Place

15 - 18 October 2013, b-it bitmax (Michael Nüsken).
21 - 25 October 2013, b-it bitmax (Konstantin Ziegler).
24 - 28 February 2014, b-it Rheinsaal (Thomas Noll).
04 - 07 March 2014, b-it Rheinsaal (Walter Unger).

Schedule: Mon-Fri 9⁰⁰ - 12³⁰ and 14⁰⁰ - 16⁰⁰, each block includes 30 minutes break. (If a course week advances fast, Friday afternoon may be free.)

Exam

Exam1: Monday, 10 March 2014, 14⁰⁰, b-it 2.1.
Post-Exam1: Monday, 14 April 2014, 10⁰⁰, b-it 1.25.
Exam2 (repetition): Friday, 16 May 2014, 14⁰⁰, RWTH 4201b.

The exam is about the entire course. Please note that the second exam is for repetitions.

Credits

For some MI-students this course is obligatory, for the others it's optional. There are no credits for this course.
There will be a written exam after the end of the complete course.

Week 1 - Mathematical tools

This week will deal essentially with three subjects:

Linear Algebra (Gauß-Jordan-algorithm, expansion, dim ker A + dim im A = n, ...),
Probabilities (Definitions, conditional probabilities, random variables, expected runtime of a random exit loop, some applications, ...),
Integers modulo N (Definition, inversion and extended Euclidean algorithm, square and multiply, exponentiation, Theorem of Lagrange, of Euler and Fermat's little theorem, RSA correctness and efficiency, ...).

The screen notes (PDF) contain all handwritten stuff (last updated 21 October 2013, 12:29).

Week 2 - Algorithms and Analysis

foundations (first examples, asymptotic notation, solving recurrence equation)
sorting (QUICKSORT, sorting in linear time)
data structures (linked lists, hash tables, binary search trees)
graph algorithms (elementary (breadth-first, depth-first), single-source shortest path)
as time permits: advanced (polynomials and the FFT, Linear Programming, etc.)

Literature

Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein, Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd edition, MIT Press, 2009.
Goldreich, Computational Complexity: A conceptual perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Knuth, TAOCP, Vol. 1 -- Fundamental Algorithms, 3rd edition, Addison-Wesley.

Week 3 - Regular Languages, Context-Free Languages, Processes and Concurrency

Week 4 - Complexity

Allocation

equivalent V4+Ü4
Note that all Media informatics courses only start in the third week of the lecturing period, so that everybody can participate in this course.