Teaching the power of randomization using a simple game

Authors:
Yana Kortsarts;Jeffrey Rufinus
Affiliations:
Widener University, Chester, PA;Widener University, Chester, PA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Year:
2006

Citing 11
Cited 1

Constructing a perfect matching is in random NC

Combinatorica
Proofs that yield nothing but their validity or all languages in NP have zero-knowledge proof systems

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Competitive paging algorithms

Journal of Algorithms
A subexponential randomized simplex algorithm (extended abstract)

STOC '92 Proceedings of the twenty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
Scheduling to minimize average completion time: off-line and on-line approximation algorithms

Mathematics of Operations Research
Proof verification and the hardness of approximation problems

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
Scheduling to minimize average completion time: off-line and on-line algorithms

Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems

Communications of the ACM
Introduction to Algorithms

Introduction to Algorithms
Improved Scheduling Algorithms for Minsum Criteria

ICALP '96 Proceedings of the 23rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming
Universal schemes for parallel communication

STOC '81 Proceedings of the thirteenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing

Enriching introductory programming courses with non-intuitive probability experiments component

Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Any deterministic algorithm can be viewed as a game between the algorithm player and the input player. A randomized algorithm can be viewed as a mixed strategy for the first player, used to minimize the disadvantage of being the first to reveal its move. We suggest a simple and accessible guessing game that can serve as both a way to explain notions in algorithms (like worst case input) to students and also to illustrate the power of randomization, presented in an intuitive way.