Data Structures and Algorithms

Data Structures and Algorithms

 

 Algorithms and data structures are identified as one of the fourr areas considered crucial to the discipline of computer science bye The Computer Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB). Data Structure is a particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer. national institute of standards and technology (NIST) defines data structure as an organization of information , usually in memory , for better algorithm effeciency , such as queue , stack , linked list , heap , dictionary , and tree , or conceptual unity , such as the name and address of a person. It may include redundant information , such as length of the list or number of nodes in a sub tree.

Abstraction Data Type

An abstract data type is a mathematical model for a certain class of data structures that have similar behavior. for examle, an abstract stack data structure could be defined by two operations: push, that inserts some data item into the structure,and pop, that extract ab item from it.

Application of Data Structure

Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specifix tasks. for example, B-trees are particulary well-suited for implementation of databases, while compiler implementations usually use hash tables to look up identifiers. Data Structures are used in almost every program or software system. specific Data Structures are essential ingredients of many efficient algorithms, and make possible the management of huge amounts of data, such as large databases and internet indexing services. Some formal design methods and programming languages emphasize data structures, rather than algorithms , as the key organizing factor in software design.

Why Study Data Structures ?

Th Study of data structures has two objectives. The firs is to identify and create useful mathematical entities and operations to determine what classes of problems can be solved by using these entities and operations. The Second is to determine the respresentation of these abstract entities and to implement the abstract operations on these concrete representations.

Array

An array is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or variables), each identified by at least one index. An Array is stored so that the position of each element can be computed from its index tuple by a mathematical formula. Arrays are analogous to the mathematical concepts of the vector, the matrix ,and the tensor. Indeed ,arrays with one or two indices are often called vectors or matrices, respectively. Arrays are often used to implement tables, especially lookup tables.

Record

A Record (also called tuple or struct) is one of the simplest data structures, consisting of two or more values or variables stored in consecutive memory positions; so that each component (called a field or member of the record) can be accessed by applying different offsets to the starting address.