I felt this class was not that good. People say it is useful for interviews but I can somewhat see that. The assignments are hard and will take up a lot of time but you have 2 weeks to do them with partners. Our midterm was really easy (around 80 average) since it was almost all autograded (no proofs asked).

I hated that I was learning graphs for like the 4th time and felt that the first few units were super repetitive from other courses like 110, 121, and 221 like runtime notations, graphs (BFS and DFS), and recurrence relations. The content does only get interested towards the end when you go into dynamic programming, reductions, and NP.

We had 3 profs that rotated around: Jordan Lovrod, Mehrdad Oveisi, and Anne Condon. All of which were pretty good but Jordan and Mehrdad were definitely my favorites since they were more engaging and easier to follow

Go over the proof techniques from CPSC 121 and understand most data structures and alg from CPSC 221. No coding in this class since it is mainly all pseudocode.

Don’t take the course with Alan Hu. He doesn’t care about your mental health at all... the midterm was hard, the final was long and unfair. You know Alan Hu made the questions when the reading was over a page long. GG guys.

Take this course in summer with a better prof.

Incredibly dry course but also extremely difficult. Patrice and Alan both being as cryptic as possible and making it impossible to get TA help. Assignments are so long, easily 15+ hours each with incredibly complex questions, page long proofs, and very strict marking. Also a brutal midterm with an average below 40. It's a good course for interviews but if you don't need to take it avoid it like the plague.

Start assignments early, take in a light semester with another course that gives you the will to live.