Subject Code/Name: FIT2004 – Algorithms and Data Structures Workload: 2hr Lecture and 3hr Studio Assessment: 50% Exam, 50% assignments -> 3 assignments = 10%, 20%, 20% Recorded Lectures: Yes the lectures are recorded, with screen capture Past exams available: Yes, there’s a few available with solutions. Make sure you do them. Textbook Recommendation: Just follow the course units and rest content is on YouTube. No need to buy extra books. Everything on internet. Lecturer(s): Rafael and Rebecca. Rebecca is easier to understand Year & Semester of completion:2022 Sem 2 Rating: 3 out of 5 Your Mark/Grade: 69 (Not the best but I am happy I passed this lol Comments: This is one of the hardest CS units you will do there is no doubt about it. Having a good grasp of programming in any language helps get through easier. Let’s get to the details. The assignments are the hardest part of this unit as they challenge you to the extreme, you are asked to write code in certain complexity such as O(N). To be honest, the assignments are approachable as long as you are grasping the content properly week to week. Then again, they are very time consuming so don’t complain. I would say about 20ish hours for each assignment and more sometimes. Work hard for your assignments you will be less stressed going to exam as you don’t need a miracle score in the exam. A lot of people barely passed in semester hurdle and had to get some high scores for exam, don’t be in that boat -> its hard. First few weeks are not too tough Induction, radix and count sort. Week 4-5 is when graphs start and bunch of algorithms come running, make sure you understand all and have a good understanding. The goal of the unit is not to memorise or hard-code, it is to make you understand different data structures, algos and their uses. Week 8 or 9 introduces dynamic programming, can be a fairly confusing one to understand. And then come suffix trees and hashing and recursion. Overall, passing this unit is the most satisfying feeling you will ever have. Don’t stress if there’s times you feel like this unit is too much. Just challenge yourself and you got this. The exam compared to the assignments is quite easy. As long as you know your content, did a few practice exams you will do great on the exam. There’s a few tricky questions in the exam but rest are quite straightforward I believe. Talking about workload, I would say make sure you attend all studios. I cannot emphasise more make sure you do not skip any. By week 6-7 the classes will be just 5-6 people attending, make sure you are one of those. The questions in the studios are sometimes very close to the assignments and even exam questions are similar. Make the most of your 3hr studios, ask the tutors as many questions and try to make some friends in there. They come in quite handy when you have no clue how to approach your assignments, obviously no collusion. Aight in the end to simplify it, Grasp content each week thoroughly, Attend studios, Practice Practice!! And you will be all good. This unit will drain you out the closer you get to exam, but the reward is just as satisfying seeing your results. Ps as a CS student, you probably still have FIT3155 to go, so make sure you understand contents of this good.

This unit covers many interesting topics and algorithms, as well as preparing you for important interview questions, however, the structure of the assignments were very difficult to understand and decipher exactly what the was required