These sources, primarily drawn from a lecture on design algorithms and optimization, introduce algorithmic thinking as a method for tackling design challenges. They discuss bottom-up approaches that build from foundational data structures and algorithms, contrasting them with top-down approaches that start with the design problem itself. The lecture explains both deterministic algorithms, which yield consistent results, and stochastic methods, which incorporate randomness, as valuable tools for finding optimal or best solutions. Crucially, the sources emphasize the need for quantifiable metrics and objective functions to evaluate and optimize designs, illustrating these concepts through real-world examples and the notion of the Pareto front, which defines the boundary of optimal design parameters.

https://namjulee.github.io/njs-lab-public/work?id=2025-introductionToDesignComputation