MIT 6.006 Introduction to Algorithms (Fall 2011): study plan and how long it takes
The MIT OpenCourseWare playlist is 47 videos and 41.8 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
47 videos · 41.8 hours · MIT OpenCourseWare
The Fall 2011 version of MIT 6.006, taught by Erik Demaine and Srini Devadas, is one of the most-watched algorithms courses online. It covers peak finding, sorting, BSTs and AVL trees, hashing, graph search, shortest paths, dynamic programming and numerics, with recitations after the lectures.
The playlist lists all lectures first and the recitations after them, so you'll want to interleave them yourself.
Who it's for: Self-learners who want a rigorous algorithms course and enjoy a classic lecture style. Python and basic discrete maths are assumed.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 41.8 hours across 47 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 84 days | 56 days | 42 days |
| 1 h a day | 42 days | 28 days | 21 days |
| 2 h a day | 21 days | 14 days | 11 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 2 hours a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 4 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–14 · 11h 58m
Day 1 · 1h 42m
- 1Lecture 1: Algorithmic Thinking, Peak Finding53m
- 2Lecture 2: Models of Computation, Document Distance49m
Day 2 · 1h 44m
- 3Lecture 3: Insertion Sort, Merge Sort51m
- 4Lecture 4: Heaps and Heap Sort53m
Day 3 · 1h 45m
- 5Lecture 5: Binary Search Trees, BST Sort53m
- 6Lecture 6: AVL Trees, AVL Sort52m
Day 4 · 1h 43m
- 7Lecture 7: Counting Sort, Radix Sort, Lower Bounds for Sorting52m
- 8Lecture 8: Hashing with Chaining51m
Day 5 · 1h 44m
- 9Lecture 9: Table Doubling, Karp-Rabin53m
- 10Lecture 10: Open Addressing, Cryptographic Hashing51m
Day 6 · 1h 39m
- 11Lecture 11: Integer Arithmetic, Karatsuba Multiplication47m
- 12Lecture 12: Square Roots, Newton's Method51m
Day 7 · 1h 41m
- 13Lecture 13: Breadth-First Search (BFS)51m
- 14Lecture 14: Depth-First Search (DFS), Topological Sort51m
Week 2Videos 15–28 · 12h 10m
Day 8 · 1h 45m
- 15Lecture 15: Single-Source Shortest Paths Problem53m
- 16Lecture 16: Dijkstra51m
Day 9 · 1h 42m
- 17Lecture 17: Bellman-Ford49m
- 18Lecture 18: Speeding up Dijkstra53m
Day 10 · 1h 44m
- 19Lecture 19: Dynamic Programming I: Fibonacci, Shortest Paths52m
- 20Lecture 20: Dynamic Programming II: Text Justification, Blackjack52m
Day 11 · 1h 42m
- 21Lecture 21: Dynamic Programming III: Parenthesization, Edit Distance, Knapsack53m
- 22Lecture 22: Dynamic Programming IV: Guitar Fingering, Tetris, Super Mario Bros.49m
Day 12 · 1h 38m
- 23Lecture 23: Computational Complexity51m
- 24Lecture 24: Topics in Algorithms Research47m
Day 13 · 1h 46m
- 25Recitation 1: Asymptotic Complexity, Peak Finding54m
- 26Recitation 2: Python Cost Model, Document Distance52m
Day 14 · 1h 53m
- 27Recitation 3: Document Distance, Insertion and Merge Sort54m
- 28Recitation 5: Recursion Trees, Binary Search Trees59m
Week 3Videos 29–42 · 13h 3m
Day 15 · 1h 45m
- 29Recitation 6: AVL Trees53m
- 30Recitation 7: Comparison Sort, Counting and Radix Sort51m
Day 16 · 1h 57m
- 31Recitation 8: Simulation Algorithms56m
- 32Recitation 9: Rolling Hashes, Amortized Analysis1h 1m
Day 17 · 1h 52m
- 33Recitation 9b: DNA Sequence Matching57m
- 34Recitation 10: Quiz 1 Review55m
Day 18 · 1h 52m
- 35Recitation 11: Principles of Algorithm Design58m
- 36Recitation 12: Karatsuba Multiplication, Newton's Method53m
Day 19 · 1h 49m
- 37Recitation 13: Breadth-First Search (BFS)55m
- 38Recitation 14: Depth-First Search (DFS)54m
Day 20 · 1h 51m
- 39R15. Shortest Paths57m
- 40Recitation 16: Rubik's Cube, StarCraft Zero55m
Day 21 · 1h 58m
- 41Recitation 18: Quiz 2 Review1h 6m
- 42Recitation 19: Dynamic Programming: Crazy Eights, Shortest Path53m
Week 4Videos 43–47 · 4h 34m
Day 22 · 1h 46m
- 43Recitation 20: Dynamic Programming: Blackjack53m
- 44Recitation 22: Dynamic Programming: Dance Dance Revolution53m
Day 23 · 1h 56m
- 45Recitation 21: Dynamic Programming: Knapsack Problem1h 9m
- 46Recitation 23: Computational Complexity47m
Day 24 · 52m
- 47Recitation 24: Final Exam Review52m
Tips for finishing
- The recitations start around video 25. Watch each one after its matching lecture rather than all at the end.
- If you prefer a more modern structure, the Spring 2020 version is also on YouTube and has its own guide here.