Java Programming University Assignment - Guidance needed

[jay89]

Hi everyone, Im new to this forum as well as to java programming (I stated this in the introduction forum section lol) anyways I am not really good with java or programming in general, so I need some guidance with this.

I have a university mini project assignment, which I am doing as part of my computing degree programme.

I have been given a list of topics to choose from, as you can see below:

General
1. Tube trip planner - Dijkasta's algorithm
2. Many Worlds simulation
Data structures
3. Small worlds and other graphs
4. Quad tree compression of images
Algorithms
5. LZ78 compression algorithm and application as a similarity metric
6. Programming with Finite State Automata - application to traffic lights, elevator,
vending machine etc
7. Comparison of sorting algorithms
Internet
8. Web spider
9. Browser
10. Multi-threaded server
Music
11. Song classification (Zipf's law, similarity metric)
12. MIDI sequencer
13. Loose synth
14. Pitch tracker (zero crossings, spectral analysis etc)
Graphics
15. Iterated Function System. Examples include Fibonacci series, Mandelbrot
set and Logistic map.
16. N-body simulation with O(N) complexity

I was wondering which topic or category I should go for as a novice programmer? They all seem difficult, well I guess I am at university so it should be lol but would anyone be able to give me some assitance or guide me to which one I should choose and how I go about it? Maybe you have done it yourself or know how to tackle a particular task?

By the way I am using Eclispe as an IDE/SDK or Editor to program with Java.

Any form of help much appreciated.

[JosAH]

If I had pick a topic I'd pick topic 7) and I'd borrow "The Art Of Computer Programming vol. III" by Donald Knuth from the library; topic 6) is also fine, but then I'd go hunting for the "Dragon" book by Aho, Sethi and Ullman or "The Design Of Algorithms" by Aho, Hopcroft and Ullman.

kind regards,

Jos

[jay89]

Thanks for the quick reply Jos.

Coincidentally I was also looking at the same task but I was wondering how I would tackle this, particulary as it is to do with algorithms lol, which I have never done and I am a beginner in programming

Would you be able to know what this task requires or this is more of a question to ask the university tutor?