New algorithms research for first year students

Motivated first-year undergraduate students should be exposed to some of the processes of research and some of the latest results. This brings them into the university culture quickly and encourages them to feel part of the development of the computer science discipline.To this end, students in a second-semester first-year computer science subject were presented with a programming project in which the goal was to implement several approximation algorithms for an active research problem. In addition, they were asked to complete four related mathematical puzzles. The lecturer author and the student author show how this project proved to be an exciting experience for them both. The paper concludes with some suggestions for expanding the research influence in this subject.

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