CMSI 2130 - Algorithms & Analysis

Professor Andrew Forney • Andrew.Forney[at]lmu.edu • Spring 2026

This course has been archived, so some portions may not be accessible any longer!

Welcome to CMSI-2130 1 / 13 / 26

If you're reading this then you've successfully found the course page for CMSI 2130! Check this page frequently for announcements that are relevant to the course, including notes, homework assignments, and practice problems.

First things first, please read through the course syllabus located here (or in the Materials tab above).

Lecture Notes
Date	Lecture Subject
Lecture 13-1 4 / 21 / 26	Taking Notes from Jack and Jill Local Search, Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing, and Genetic Algorithms -- all in one quivering mass! Lecture Video (15-1) Lecture Video (14-2) Lecture Video (14-1) Lecture Video (13-1) Lecture Video (12-2)
Lecture 11-2 4 / 9 / 26	Graphs are Constraining Ordering and Structure heuristics for CSPs! Lecture Video (12-1) Lecture Video (11-2)
Lecture 10-2 4 / 7 / 26	Turning up the AC Filtering, constraint propagation, and AC-3 make their grand debut! Lecture Video (11-1)
Lecture 10-1 3 / 24 / 26	Coloring Books for Computer Scientists Introduction to Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs): map coloring never looked so technical! Lecture Video (10-2)
Lecture 9-1 3 / 17 / 26	In Not So Many Words Greedy programming gets its day in the sun with a look at compression and Huffman Coding! Lecture Video (10-1) Lecture Video (9-2) Lecture Video (9-1)
Lecture 8-1 3 / 10 / 26	Blooming Imaginations Bloom filters -- data structures meet probabilistic programming! Lecture Video (8-2) Lecture Video (8-1)
Lecture 7-1 2 / 24 / 26	The Red Squiggly Underline - A Biography The magic behind the foundations of spelling correctors and checkers! Lecture Video (7-1)
Lecture 6-1 2 / 17 / 26	Changing from Changemaking Another example of Dynamic Programming on the LCS problem -- good for comparison! Lecture Video (6-2)* Lecture Video (6-1) (* Recordings from past semester since I was at a conference; skip the intro slides as those dates are incorrect!)
Lecture 5-1 2 / 10 / 26	From A* to Coinstar Changemaking makes another appearance in this discussion of Dynamic Programming! Lecture Video (5-2) Lecture Video (5-1)
Lecture 3-2 1 / 29 / 26	Foiled Again! Adversarial search and α-β pruning! Lecture Video (4-2) Lecture Video (4-1) Lecture Video (3-2)
Lecture 2-2 1 / 22 / 26	Here-istics Best-First, Informed search, and heuristics (get it? heuristics here? hereistics?). Lecture Video (3-1) Lecture Video (2-2)
Lecture 1-1 1 / 13 / 26	Search and Ye Shall (Hopefully) Find Problem solving, uninformed searches, and memoization! Lecture Video (2-1) Lecture Video (1-2) Lecture Video (1-1)

Homework
Number	Date Assigned	Date Due (@ midnight)
Homework 5 - Arc Nemesis Grading Tests [.zip]* (Bonus Grading Tests same as in skeleton)	4 / 6 / 26	5 / 6 / 26
Homework 4 - Huff and Puff Grading Tests [.zip]*	3 / 18 / 26	4 / 14 / 26
Homework 3 - Distle'd Knowledge	2 / 24 / 26	3 / 24 / 26
Homework 2 - Tic'd Off Grading Tests [.zip]*	2 / 5 / 26	2 / 27 / 26
Homework 1 - A-y Night Grading Tests [.py]	1 / 22 / 26	2 / 10 / 26

Classwork
Number	Date Assigned	Date Due (@ midnight)
[Bonus] Classwork 7 - Fetching Pails of Water Solution	4 / 28 / 26	5 / 5 / 26
Classwork 6 - The Queen's Domain Solution	4 / 14 / 26	4 / 21 / 26
Classwork 5 - Trie, Trie Again Solution	3 / 19 / 26	3 / 27 / 26 * (Added bonus day to complete!)
[Bonus] Classwork 4 - Weighting Tables Solution	2 / 17 / 26	2 / 24 / 26 (no late submissions accepted)
Classwork 3 - Mini Classwork, Maximal Gains Solution [.pdf]	2 / 5 / 26	2 / 12 / 26
Classwork 2 - A Breadth of Fresh Air Solution [.py]	1 / 20 / 26	1 / 27 / 26
Classwork 1 - Finding your (algo)Rhythm Solution [.py]	1 / 13 / 26	1 / 20 / 26

Supplementary Class Materials
Date	Item
4 / 28 / 26	Final Exam Information All you need to know about the Final Exam... well, all you need to know you need to know.
2 / 17 / 26	Midterm Information All you need to know about the Midterm... well, all you need to know you need to know.
1 / 13 / 26	Course Syllabus Contains vital information about the class, contact information, dates, homework, policies, and grading.
1 / 13 / 26	Development Environment Setup Instructions for how to install the software required for this course.
1 / 13 / 26	GitHub Classroom Tutorial Contains tutorials on how to use GitHub classroom and several popular IDEs to be used in this class.
1 / 13 / 26	Python Style Guide The big parts of sweating the small stuff -- programmatic style do's and don'ts!