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CSC – 332 Data Structures

CSC – 332 Data Structures. Dr. Curry Guinn. Quick Info. Dr. Curry Guinn CIS 2045 guinnc@uncw.edu www.uncw.edu/people/guinnc 962-7937 Office Hours: MTWR: 11:00am-12:00pm and by appointment. What is CSC 332?. Data Structures THE Gateway Course

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CSC – 332 Data Structures

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  1. CSC – 332 Data Structures Dr. Curry Guinn

  2. Quick Info • Dr. Curry Guinn • CIS 2045 • guinnc@uncw.edu • www.uncw.edu/people/guinnc • 962-7937 • Office Hours: MTWR: 11:00am-12:00pm and by appointment

  3. What is CSC 332? • Data Structures • THE Gateway Course • Gateway to most 300 and 400 level CSC courses • Gateway to our graduate CSC courses • Not just a gateway course at UNCW – it is the pivotal course in all undergraduate computer science programs

  4. Why Is It So Important? • How you organize and access information on computers is fundamental • Across disciplines within computer science the same sorts of operations arise again and again • This course investigates the best practices of past scientists trying to solve those puzzles

  5. How To Approach This Course Your future CSC courses and your future career in IT/Computers depends on mastering this material.

  6. How Do I Earn an ‘A’? • Read the books. • Come to every lecture. • Write programs. • Turn in assignments on time. • Work independently • Every assignment must be submitted (otherwise ‘F’). • Make use of office hours • Send me email early and often.

  7. Course and Grading Criteria

  8. The Required Texts • Mark Allen Weiss, Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java, Second or Third Edition. • Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

  9. Specific Goals of the Course • Goal 1: Understand and Implement Data Structures That Have Found to Be Important and Particularly Useful An example: Arrays Why are arrays useful?

  10. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • What can you do with arrays? • How do you find something in an array? • How do we know which algorithm for finding something in an array is “better”? • What does “better” mean in this context? • Analysis of algorithms

  11. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • When are arrays bad? • Which leads us to linked lists, queues, and stacks

  12. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • Which leads us to sorting • Some sorting algorithms depend on recursion so we’ll need to study that too

  13. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • Linked lists are not so good for searching and sorting • Which leads us to binary trees • Are binary search trees always better than a linked list?

  14. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • Which leads us to studying how to balance binary trees • Are there other useful tree structures?

  15. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • Trees are a special type of graph. • What problems lend themselves to being represented as a graph?

  16. Goal 1: Understanding Data Structures • Linear search takes O(n) time • Binary search takes log(n) time • Hashing search takes 1 time!!! • I wonder if there are any drawbacks?

  17. Are there algorithm patterns that we see repeated? • Greedy Algorithms • Divide-and-conquer • Dynamic programming • Randomized algorithms

  18. Goal 2: Unix-based Operating Systems • Work should be done on our Linux machines (babbage.cis.uncw.edu). • Java programming will be bare bones – just a simple text editor and command line compiling (javac) • Why are we doing this to you?

  19. Goal 2: Unix • Unix dominates certain markets within computer science. Which ones? • Unix is better than Microsoft operating systems • Why didn’t unix become the dominant OS? • The linux revolution

  20. Goal 2: Unix • What do you need to learn? • A very small subset of the operating system language (link) • A text editor: I’ll show you “vi” (actually it’s “vim”) (http://people.uncw.edu/guinnc/courses/Spring14/332/vi.html)

  21. Goal 3: Becoming a Computer Scientist • Love what you are doing • Take delight in problem-solving • What do computer scientists do? • They take problems and figure out how to use the computer as a tool to help solve the problem

  22. Goal 3: Becoming a Computer Scientist So, to be a computer scientist, you need to • Be good at problem analysis • Know a diversity of techniques that are applicable to computer problem solving • Be able to find the match between a problem and possible techniques

  23. Goal 3: Becoming a Computer Scientist • Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid • Pulitzer prize winning book. • Intended for a general science audience. • Cult classic. Huge online presence. • Tremendous relevance to data structures (and CSC 360, 532, 415, 515)

  24. Goal 3: Becoming a Computer Scientist • GEB, in particular, focuses on • Problem-solving • Recursion • Computability • Computational logic • Can the manipulation of data by formal rules ever lead to true intelligence?

  25. Unix • Unix • Before clicking on that link, look at next page first

  26. For Next Class, Thursday • Blackboard Quiz due Thursday night • Homework 1 due Tuesday, 01/21, 11:59pm • For Tuesday • Login to your shannon account • Play with and look at the man pages for “ls”, “cd”, “mkdir”, “rmdir”, “rm”, “less”, “more” • Look at these two local links: unix.html and vi.html • Here’s a useful page: http://kb.iu.edu/data/afsk.html

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