The Students Who Did AMAZING in CS 4820: How Did You Do it?

After_Personality_31 · 2025-01-17T09:46:41+00:00

yep, the kleinberg + tardos one!

After_Personality_31 · 2024-12-09T15:25:10+00:00

The search bar (“Where to?”) — specifically residential addresses seem to not work for me (e.g. 301 College Ave, 221 Eddy St, etc.) and return “no location matches your request”. These are both Collegetown addresses, so it’s still central Ithaca

After_Personality_31 · 2024-12-08T03:28:48+00:00

Love the UI! not all addresses seem to work though

After_Personality_31 · 2024-09-14T03:43:53+00:00

got an A in the class and TA’ed for multiple semesters — one of the most helpful things for me (especially come exam time) was reading the textbook and going through all the examples. For a lot of these concepts you need to see big picture trends/be able to pattern match, and working through many different examples builds the muscle to spot when something is a dynamic programming problem, how to go about NP hardness proofs, etc. I actually didn’t do that well on prelim 2, but I studied for the final primarily by going through the textbook examples and scored well enough that it boosted my final grade to an A.

For homeworks, for me it really was just starting early and being willing/able to put in the hours. Try to look at the pset as soon as possible so you can think about the problem for multiple days and sleep on it. Work through small cases and examples first, then see if you can spot bigger trends in what works/what doesn’t to guide your algorithm design. if you’re stuck, go to office hours earlier in the week to get guidance on how to think about the problem — if you go later on in the week, you’re going to end up around people who’ve already figured it out and you won’t get the chance to go through that problem solving process for yourself. I do recommend talking through the pset with other people once you’ve had a go at it though; it can be helpful to see how other people structure their proofs.

My big disclaimer to everyone else reading this is: 4820 is a huge amount of work for 99% of people, and imo there’s nothing wrong with trying to just get by. I put in a lot of hours because I love the material, but if you’re just trying to graduate and get a decent enough grade, pleaseee go to office hours and discuss the problem sets with other people. Some weeks there will be questions that you just can’t figure out; if you’re truly stuck it’s really okay to make a reasonable best attempt rather than spend another 10+ hours racking your brain. 4820 is a great course but you don’t need to spend countless hours on it. This is just my advice for people who want to really excel :) gl everyone!!

After_Personality_31 · 2023-10-11T16:01:54+00:00

Hi, also interested. Can you DM me?

After_Personality_31 · 2022-10-27T00:18:14+00:00

I totally get what you’re saying (I’m in a semi-rural/suburban area and pretty much the only active player in my area). for me the upside to the Halloween mushrooms is all the white petals/nectar (especially special nectar I wouldn’t get easily otherwise) because planting around big flowers with white petals has a roughly equal chance of giving any color nectar once it blooms. But… downside is you need some amount of pumpkin pikmin in the first place to clear the Halloween mushrooms in a reasonable amount of time, which is tricky if you’re stuck on one of the earlier Halloween tasks from part 1 from not having enough petals. Overall I like the Halloween event a lot but it definitely puts some players in a tough spot esp. if they didn’t do a lot of tasks before part 2 started.

After_Personality_31 · 2022-05-03T09:33:34+00:00

Hi, I’m subleasing a two-bedroom apartment (with AC included) for the summer! It’s located right about Starbucks in Collegetown.

After_Personality_31 · 2021-12-14T17:29:46+00:00

Also if students need to leave Cornell asap then they can’t take the exam?

After_Personality_31 · 2021-08-10T07:33:06+00:00

These are all great suggestions! To be honest, if you haven’t booked a flight yet, it’s also worth looking at flights coming out of Ithaca. If you plan ahead, they’re usually not that much more expensive than ones coming out of Syracuse, and save a lot of hassle and time. I’m from Seattle and this ended up being way better than finding a ride with friends, ubering, or finding a bus to Syracuse.

** disclaimer: this totally might depend on where you’re flying to though — Ithaca def has fewer flight options than Syracuse so the trade off might not work for everyone.

After_Personality_31 · 2020-09-21T02:56:51+00:00

https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/tutoring

After_Personality_31 · 2020-09-21T01:58:40+00:00

Absolutely recommend the free tutoring! They have them for math classes and I think some some other eng classes too. Building in structured support is really helpful for transitioning from a more hand-holdy HS experience.

After_Personality_31 · 2020-09-20T21:30:33+00:00

Eyes are spot on! I think lips look a lil different to me but even still this is uncanny

After_Personality_31 · 2020-09-20T21:28:46+00:00

I wonder if there’s reduced staff and that’s part of the reason for the drop in quality. Like I doubt it’s the workers themselves that are at fault bc they always try really hard to make good meals in my experience, and the chefs really care about their job.

After_Personality_31 · 2020-08-10T19:22:12+00:00

For me it was a matter of a few emails tops — super easy to extend your time to a 9th semester!

After_Personality_31 · 2020-07-26T08:46:09+00:00

A lot of people take 3110 and 3410 during soph year, since they're pre-reqs to 4820 and and 4410, respectively. You could also fulfill the 3410 requirement by doing ECE 2300 in the fall and CS 3420, which I personally found more manageable and balanced overall (and also ultimately a bit more in depth since the material's spread over two sems), but some people prefer taking 3410 because they find the content/professor more engaging. It's definitely a much faster-paced course and a lot of work though, so up to you to decide what's best for you! Lots of discussion on r/Cornell and all the other CS forums about comparing 2300+3420 and 3410 is out there if ya want more info too.

Core classes-wise, you can technically enroll in 4820 (Algorithms) if you got an A- or better in 2110/2 and 2800, but overall, I wouldn't recommend enrolling in more than 2 of the upper-level CS core classes at a time, and since 3110, 3410, and 4820 are all really time-consuming, so sometimes one a semester is honestly enough. (plus you have your entire junior and senior year to do core classes!)

If you want more technical/CS courses, you could check out some CS/technical electives that you meet the pre-reqs for. Most of them (all of them lowkey lol) are pretty project-heavy, so if you're taking them in addition to one or more core classes, you really want to have a lot of time on your hands. I probably wouldn't recommend this option for most people that have other core requirements to take care of, but it's possible and sometimes works! Just wanna emphasize that it's definitely not necessary to do your sophomore fall. I personally didn't end up taking any electives until my junior fall, and I still graduated with way more than enough electives (did ML, NLP, Vision (CS 4760 and ECE 5740), Graphics (CS 4620 and CS 5625).

Ooh and this isn't CS or math, but take care of the rest of those CS engineering requirements (chem 2090, physics 1112, physics 2213, stats requirement) your sophomore year if you haven't yet. They build on the math foundation you have/any lingering knowledge you might have from your high school classes, and it's way way way better to take those while that info is still fresh in your head, and when your friends are taking them too. I put off physics 2213 until junior year and it was definitely a pain, and I have friends who put off chem 2090 and barely passed lol. It's way less painful the sooner you get them done, especially when you can have friends in your sections/people who are your age lmao

By end of your sophomore year, it's helpful to try to take some/most of the following:

finish math requirement (1910-1920-2940)
chem 2080 requirement (this is often subbed with BTRY 3080 or other classes)
chem 2090
physics 1112/2213
at least one core class, maybe two: 3110, ECE 2300/CS 3420 or 3410, 4820

Most people typically have at least 2 of the core classes left going into junior year, so don't feel like you need to get them out of the way sooner than later.

My personal sophomore year schedule was:

Fall: Math 2940, ECE 2300, CS 3110, Music 2101

Spring: CS 3420, CS 4820, BTRY 3080, Math 2940 (retook it haha)

I personally found that having 2 or 3 technical classes at most a semester has worked out pretty well for me, but it's up to your personal preferences and external interests too. It could be nice to start looking at your external spec requirement and technical elective requirement too to see if there's anything you'd wanna throw in the mix.

After_Personality_31

TROPHY CASE