Claire Mathieu

This course covers the basic ground about approximation algorithms and would be very valuable for a practitioner, but seems designed for people who already know the materials and is more theoretical than applied.Lectures are very abstract --with a description of the problem and a formal description of the solution--, there are few examples with step-by-step tracing of algorithms --that is how the algorithm actually works to solve the problem--, and a significant amount of expertise is assumed --so much so, that you wouldn't need this course. For example, there are questions about "approximation ratio", but it is not explained. This seems like something that is inherent to approximation algorithms, but is only asked in the exams/project, and is not even mentioned in the lectures. Similar issues abound around the course.
- Review by Neeraj K