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Contact: Frederic Didier
Room: BC 128
Tel: 021 6931204
Email: frederic [dot] didier [at] epfl [dot] ch
Although not really well known in the educational community, algorithm contests like the one organized by Topcoder are a good way to get a deep understanding behind all the classical algorithms in an interesting way.
The aim of this project is to look at one of the subjects that may be used in a long contest and try your best to get a good solution. Basically, the problem statement is easy to understand but has no optimal solution and thus allows for trying many different approaches. Your goal is to come up with one that gives good results on the various instances of the given problem. Moreover, you will be supplied with a visualizer and a tester to see how efficient your approach is and to help you in the development phase.
This project is more applied than theoretical and requires some programming skills. You can send an email to get more details or to see some example problems.