This is the website for a summer course on algorithms and programming for high schoolers, in Kingston, Jamaica from July 5th to July 31st, 2026. Here you will find lecture notes and lab assignments. You can follow using Google Colab or, alternatively, by downloading the notebooks and using Jupyter notebook. We are using Python 3.
For reference, morning exercises are marked as “A”, afternoon as “B”, and challenge notebooks as “C”. Worksheets are labeled “W” followed by the worksheet number.
Course Content
Week 1
| Day 1: Print statements, comments, variables & types then booleans and operations. Exercises: A (see variables slides), B, C. |
| Day 2: Lists, String & Functions and loops, nested loops & more functions. Exercises: A (see lists & loops slides), B (see functions slides), C. |
| Day 3: Calling functions, print vs. return, and variable scoping. Exercises: A, B (see more functions slides), C. |
| Day 4: More lists, slicing, loops, Tic-Tac-Toe then string operations and while loops. Exercises: A, B, W1. |
| Day 5: Review: Functions, lists, strings, loops & extra Python, then week 1 exam. Exercises: A, C. |
Week 2
| Day 1: Code tracing, error messages, and pseudocode. Exercises: A, B, C. |
| Day 2: Tracing function calls, then more functions review. Exercises: A (Project) (see Project slides), C, W2, W3. |
| Day 3: Introduction to recursion, then more recursion basics. Exercises: A, B, C, W4. |
| Day 4: Sudoku Solver, then On the Perils of Parrots. Exercises: A, B, W5, W6. |
| Day 5: Week 2 review, then week 2 exam and Q&A with Dr. Timnit Gebru. Exercise: W7. |
Week 3
| Day 1: Nested loops & recursion review, then logarithms & binary search. Exercises: B, C, W8. |
| Day 2: Time complexity, then sorting. Exercises: A, B, W9, W10. |
| Day 3: Introduction to graphs, then graph traversals (DFS). Exercises: A, B (see DFS slides), C, W11. |
| Day 4: Graph traversals (BFS), then Karatsuba's algorithm. Exercises: A (see BFS slides), B, C, W12, W13. |
| Day 5: Streaming algorithms, then week 3 exam and Q&A with Prof. Jelani Nelson. Exercises: A, W14. |
Week 4
| Day 1: Language, text processing, then randomness & probability. Exercises: A, B (see BFS review), C. |
| Day 2: Language modeling. Exercises A, B, C, W15. |
| Day 3: Problem solving strategies and memoization. Exercises A, B. |
| Day 4: Week 4 exam, TA⚡talks (Naila, Kanav, Sarika, and Anushka), then Q&A with TAs. |
| Day 5: Graduation ceremony (recording). |