Probability and Algorithms, Caltech CS150, Winter 2006

Leonard J. Schulman

Office hours by appointment.
TA: Kevin Ko
Lectures: MW 10:30-12:00. Location: 125 Steele.

Catalog listing:

Elementary randomized algorithms and algebraic bounds in communication, hashing, and identity testing. Game tree evaluation. Topics may include randomized parallel computation; independence, k-wise independence and derandomization; rapidly mixing Markov chains; expander graphs and their applications; clustering algorithms.

Course textbook:

Some useful books:

  1. Adams and Guillemin, Measure theory and probability
  2. Motwani & Raghavan, Randomized Algorithms (reserve, SFL)
  3. Alon & Spencer, The Probabilistic Method
  4. Feller, Probability Theory
  5. Cover & Thomas, Information Theory
  6. Grimmett & Stirzaker, Probability and Random Processes.
  7. Artin, Algebra
  8. Herstein, Topics in Algebra

Problem sets:

Links:

The page for the previous offering of this class is here.