AlgLab: An Open Laboratory for Experiments On Algorithms

About AlgLab

Our mission is to serve as a working research lab, educational center, library, and repository for software, tools, and articles related to experimental research on algorithms.

This site contains resources and tools for you to:

• Learn about a problem and its algorithms;
• Run programs and measure performance;
• Plot data and see results from classic experiments;
• Modify the programs and conduct your own experiments;
• Contribute new results about performance.

This site is intended as an open resource for:

• The research computer scientist, experienced in algorithm design and analysis, looking for implementations and experimentation tools.
• The computer science graduate student, looking to gain experience in experimental analysis of algorithms.
• The teacher looking for project ideas and support tools for experiments on algorithms.
• The computer science undergraduate interested in learning more about algorithms and data structures.

This is a companion website to A Guide to Experimental Algorithmics, by Catherine C. McGeoch (Cambridge University Press, 2011). The site contains additional programs, projects, and tools beyond those mentioned in the book.

Who We Are

Jon Bentley

Jon Bentley is a computer scientist at Avaya Labs Research. His interests include programming techniques, algorithm design, and the design of software tools and interfaces. He has written three books on programming and articles on a variety of topics, ranging from the theory of algorithms to software engineering. He received a B.S. from Stanford in 1974 and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1976, then taught Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon for six years. He joined Bell Labs in 1982, and retired in 2001 to join Avaya Labs. He has been a visiting faculty member at West Point and Princeton, and has been a member of teams that have shipped software tools, telephone switches, telephones and web services.

Catherine McGeoch

Catherine McGeoch is the Beitzel Professor of Technology and Society in the computer science department at Amherst College. She is interested in the development of experimental methods and data analysis techniques for studying combinatorial algorithms. She received a B.S. from Butler University in 1981, and an M.S (1983) and Ph. D. (1986) from Carnegie Mellon University (advisor: Jon Bentley). She is a past Editor in Chief of the ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics. She was co-organizer (with David S. Johnson) of the first DIMACS Implementation Challenge, and co-organizer (with Mike Goodrich) of the first ALENEX (Algorithm Engineering and Experimentation) workshop. She is the author of A Guide to Experimental Algorithmics, published by Cambridge University Press, 2011.