CST370 - Module 4
What did I learn in the fourth week of CST370? This week introduced only one new algorithm, which is the merge sort. The lecture and exercises helped me to understand how the merge sort works and fits into the divide-and conquer paradigm, as the merge sort broke down the problem into smaller subproblems, solved recursively, and then combined the results together through a merge. In the end, the way the merge sort worked through the visual display helped me to understand why the time complexity is Θ ( n ⋅ log n ), which helped me answer some things on the midterm. Although the merge sort was the sole new topic covered this week, the rest of the week was dedicated to preparing for the midterm. The review materials revisited everything from the prior weeks, illustrating to everyone that they should study or review brute-force strategies, graph traversal, recurrence relations, asymptotic notation, and combinatorial problems, while providing some sample exercises by revi...