Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies
From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: ALGORITHMS ANYBODY?
Message-ID: <4200036@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Aug 90 05:54:00 GMT
References: <90345@<90Aug22>
Lines: 17
Nf-ID: #R:<90Aug22:90345:m.cs.uiuc.edu:4200036:000:853
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Aug 26 00:54:00 1990


Why not teach them about hash tables and then have the implement LZW
data compression?  See IEEE Computer June 1984 for more information.
This is a very good use of hash tables, and one of the fastest and
most powerful compression algorithms known (LZ compression is,
theoretically, asymptotically optimal for many types of redundancy).

I can't stand these idiotic algorithms books that concentrate on
huffman coding which is a dead algorithm.


If the students have access to bitmapped displays, why not teach them
about "floyd's" algorithm for converting grey-scale images into binary
images.  Actually, I don't really know the precise details of floyd's
algorithm, but it is one of the most widely used heuristic algorithms
for producing pictures (just about every binary image you ever saw was
probably produced by a variant of floyd's algorithm).