Teaching Algorithmics – Theory and Practice

Efficient algorithms and data structures are important fundamentals of all sophisticated computer applications. For that reason, these topics are included in Computer Science and Business Informatics curricula at almost all universities. Indeed, the classic textbooks present algorithms mainly as pure mathematical results [3]. They leave the challenges of their implementation to the readers. On the other hand, algorithm engineering is a very popular and dynamic research topic. Studies in this area are directed at developing efficient programs that are suited for real machines and real world problem instances [1, 4]. Think, for instance, about modern navigation systems that need fast realizations of shortest path algorithms for graphs with Millions of nodes on a hand-held computer with low memory resources. The research includes the design, analysis, implementation and evaluation of different algorithms by experiments. The new challenges from practice must be addressed in teaching graph algorithms, too. Questions like suitable data structures, efficiency, stability, modularity and reusability of software are very important and closely related to algorithms. At the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund, a corresponding modern Algorithmics course is offered for several years [13]. It considers the mentioned topics in their interrelations. The course includes theoretical lectures on graph algorithms and practical exercises on their realization in the computer laboratory. Here, the tool VinetS [17] has been used successfully. We have designed and implemented the framework VinetS in Java for the visualization of network structures at our university. The design of this software is sketched in Section 3. In addition to the standard exercises, the best students are involved in projects for further development of the tool itself. Some of their results are presented in Section 4.