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Lecture 1 - Introduction

The document discusses the fundamentals of algorithms and data structures, emphasizing their role in solving everyday problems through precise instructions and procedures. It outlines the goals of algorithm design, such as correctness and efficiency, while also differentiating between algorithms, data structures, and programs. Additionally, it highlights the importance of analyzing algorithm efficiency and developing a structured approach to algorithm creation.

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7 views

Lecture 1 - Introduction

The document discusses the fundamentals of algorithms and data structures, emphasizing their role in solving everyday problems through precise instructions and procedures. It outlines the goals of algorithm design, such as correctness and efficiency, while also differentiating between algorithms, data structures, and programs. Additionally, it highlights the importance of analyzing algorithm efficiency and developing a structured approach to algorithm creation.

Uploaded by

markkifunye159
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Data structures and

algorithms
BCT2202 (4CU’s)
By Mrs. Barbara A. Mwijukye
What are Algorithms About?
• Solving problems in everyday life
• Travel from Bolzano to Munich; Cook Spaghetti, eggs; Register for a
Bachelor thesis at FUB
• For all these problems, there are
• Instructions, Recipes, Procedures,
• Which describe a complex operation in terms of
• elementary operations (“beat well …”); control structures and conditions
(“… until fluffy”)
Algorithms
• Problems involving numbers, strings, mathematical objects:
• For two numbers, determine their sum, product, …
• For two numbers, find their greatest common divisor
• For a sequence of strings, find an alphabetically sorted permutation of the
sequence
• For two arithmetic expressions, find out if they are equivalent
• On a map, find for a given house the closest bus stop
• We call instructions, recipes, for such problems algorithms
Overall Picture
• Using a computer to help solve problems.
• Precisely specify the problem
• Designing programs
• Architecture
• Algorithm
• Writing programs
• Verifying (testing) programs
Overall Picture
• Data Structure and Algorithm Design Goals
• Correctness
• Efficiency
• Implementation Goals
• Robustness
• Reusability
• Adaptability
This course is not about:
• Programming languages
• Computer architecture
• Software architecture
• SW design and implementation principles
• We will only touch upon the theory of complexity and
computability.
Data Structures and Algorithms
• Data structure
• Organization of data to solve the problem at hand
• Algorithm
• Outline, the essence of a computational procedure, step-by-step
instructions
• Program
• Implementation of an algorithm in some programming language
Data Structure Example Applications

• How does Google quickly find web pages that contain a search term?
• What’s the fastest way to broadcast a message to a network of
computers?
• How can a subsequence of DNA be quickly found within the genome?
• How does your operating system track which memory (disk or RAM)
is free?
What is a Data Structure Anyway?
• It’s an agreement about:
• How to store a collection of objects in memory,
• What operations we can perform on that data,
• The algorithms for those operations, and
• How time and space efficient those algorithms are.
• Ex. vector in C++:
• Stores objects sequentially in memory; Can access, change, insert or delete
objects; Algorithms for insert & delete will shift items as needed
Algorithmic problem
• Data structuring is the best way of organizing the data, associated
with that problem.
• An algorithmic problem is essentially, that you have a certain
specifications of an input and specify what the output should be
like.
Specification of
Specification
? output as a
of input
function of input
Algorithmic problem
• There is an infinite number of possible input instances satisfying
the specification.
• For example:
• A sorted, non-decreasing sequence of natural numbers, on nonzero, finite length:
• 1, 20, 908, 909, 100000, 1000000000
• 3
• Above are the two examples of input, which meets the
specification and I have not given any output specification.
What is an instance?

• A sorted, non-decreasing sequence of natural numbers


of non-zero, finite length forms an instance.
• Those two examples are the instances of the input.
• You can have any possible number of instances that may
take sequence of sorted, non-decreasing numbers as
input.
Algorithmic Solution
• An algorithm is essentially, describing the actions that one should
take on the input instance to get the specified output.
• Also there can be infinitely many input instances and algorithms
for solving certain problem. (Each one of you could do it in a
different way).
Input Instance Output related
adhering to Algorithm to the input
Specification as required
Algorithmic Solution

• Algorithm describes actions on the input instance


• There may be many correct algorithms for the same
algorithmic problem.
Good algorithm
• There are so many different algorithms for solving a certain problem.
• What is a good algorithm?
• Good algorithm is an efficient algorithm.
• What is efficient?
• Efficient is something, which has small running time and takes less memory
(space used).

• These will be the two measures of efficiency we will be working with.


• There could also be other measures of efficiency.
Efficiency
• We will be spending more time on analyzing;
• The running time of an algorithm
• The space used.
• We will be interested in the efficiency of algorithms, as a function
of input size.
What is a good algorithm?
• Efficient:
• Running time
• Space used
• Efficiency as a function of input size:
• The number of bits in the input number
• Number of data elements (numbers, points)
• How should we measure the running time of an algorithm?
Measuring the running time
• Experimental study:
• Write a program that implements the algorithm
• Run the program with data sets of varying size and
composition
• Use a method like the system current time millis () to get an
accurate measure of the actual running time
Measuring the running time
• Limitations of experimental studies
• It necessary to implement and test the algorithm in order to determine
its running time.
• Experiments can be done only a limited set of inputs and may not be
indicative of the running time on other inputs not included in the
experiment.
• In order to compare two algorithms, the same hardware and software
environments should be used.
Beyond Experimental Studies
• We will develop a general methodology for analyzing the running time of algorithms.
• We are going to do it as follows:
• First we are going to develop a high level description of an algorithm instead of
testing one of its implementations.
• A methodology that would help us to take into account of all possible input
instances.
• Also it will allow us to evaluate the efficiency of the algorithm in a way that it is
independent of the hardware and software environment (platform) we are
using.
Definition
• An algorithm is a sequence of unambiguous instructions of
solving a problem, i.e., for obtaining a required output for any
legitimate input
in a finite amount of time.
• This presumes a mechanism to execute the algorithm
• Properties of algorithms:
• Correctness; Termination; (Non-)Determinism; Run Time
How to Develop an Algorithm
• Precisely define the problem.
• Precisely specify the input and output and consider all cases.
• Come up with a simple plan to solve the problem at hand.
• The plan is independent of a (programming) language
• The precise problem specification influences the plan.
• Turn the plan into an implementation
• The problem representation (data structure) influences the implementation
Pre-conditions, Post-conditions
• Specify pre-conditions and post-conditions of algorithms:
• Pre-condition: what does the algorithm get as input?
• Post-condition: what does the algorithm produce as output?
how does this relate to the input?
• Make sure you have considered the special cases:
• Empty set, number 0, pointer nil, …
Any questions..??

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