CS 241-01, Computer Science III: Data Structures and Algorithms, Fall 2010

Abstract

• So far, you have acquired proficiency in programming. This course will start the process of your transformation from a programmer to a computer scientist. One of the important tasks of a computer scientist is to make efficient use of computational resources. This course will teach you about different ways of organizing the data to facilitate such efficient use, and will also discuss efficient techniques to perform some fundamental operations in computer science. • You will learn to use the techniques discussed in this course to solve commonly encountered computer science problems efficiently. This course will also teach you to analyze the efficiency your program in a mathematically rigorous manner. Material you learn in this course is critical to your becoming a good software developer later. CS 241, Fall 2010 2 of 5 • This course will focus on algorithms, analysis, and the use of basic and advanced data structures. Among the specific data structures covered are strings, stacks, records, linked lists, trees and graphs. Recursion will also be covered. Sequential and random files, hashing and indexed sequential access methods for files will be discussed. Finally, some standard computer science algorithms (sorting and searching) will be discussed. • You are free to develop the code for the assignments on your own computer. However, keep in mind that the source code that you submit for the homework assignments must run successfully on the computers in the on-campus lab. • This IS NOT a course in object-oriented programming! o This is a course about efficiency of programs and programming. In this course, we will pursue various meanings of "efficient". It is efficient to: • minimize the run time of code, especially code that is destined for re-use. • minimize the memory and storage needs of code, recognizing that there may be a trade-off between speed and memory requirements. • spend less time writing a program of equal quality. In fact, it is even more efficient to spend the same time writing a program of higher quality. • re-use code, instead of re-writing code. • select only the linguistic features you need without having to use costly extra features you do not need.