About the Workshop

The 4th Workshop on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments (ALENEX 02), was held in San Francisco, California, on January 4-5, 2002 at the Radisson Miyako Hotel. It was co-located with the Thirteenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA02), which took place the following three days, January 6-8, 2002.

The aim of the annual ALENEX workshops is to provide a forum for the presentation of original research in the implementation and experimental evaluation of algorithms and data structures. We invite submissions in all areas of algorithm engineering and experimentation including:

• Significant case studies in experimental analysis (such studies may tighten, extend, or otherwise improve current theoretical results),
• Significant case studies in the implementation, testing, and evaluation of algorithms for realistic environments and scenarios, including specific applied areas that present unique challenges in their underlying algorithmic problems. Examples of such areas include, but are not limited to:

  • Databases	• Networks	• Operations research
  • Mathematical programming	• Computational biology	• Computational physics
  • Computational finance	• Computational geometry	• World Wide Web

• Papers addressing the issues of efficient implementation, testing and fine-tuning of discrete algorithms,
• Papers addressing methodological issues and standards in the context of empirical research on algorithms and data structures,
• Papers addressing methodological issues regarding the process of converting user requirements into efficient algorithmic solutions and implementations,
• The development of software repositories and platforms which allow use of, and experimentation with, efficient discrete algorithms.

The proceedings of ALENEX 02 have been published in Springer's series Lecture Notes in Computer Science as volume LNCS 2409.