Data Structures and Algorithms

(ESO207)

Lecture 1:
• An overview and motivation for the course
• some concrete examples.

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 Some Information
ESO207/ESO207A: Data Structures and Algorithms

Course Website: moodle.cse.iitk.ac.in

Instructor email: rtewari@cse.iitk.ac.in
TA in-charge: Ronak Bhadra (ronakb@cse.iitk.ac.in)

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 Acknowledgment

Thanks to Prof Surender Baswana for allowing

me to use and modify his lecture slides.

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 Prerequisite of this course

• A good command on Programming in C

– Programs involving arrays
– Recursion
– Linked lists (preferred)

• Fascination for solving Puzzles

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 Salient features of the course

• Every concept We shall re-invent in the class itself.

• Solving each problem Through discussion in the class.

solution will emerge naturally if we ask

right set of questions
and then try to find their answers.

… so that finally it is a concept/solution derived by you

and not a concept from some scientist/book/teacher.

Isn’t that nice 

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Let us open a desktop/laptop

A processor (CPU)
speed = few GHz
(a few nanoseconds to execute an instruction)

Internal memory (RAM)

size = a few GB (Stores a billion bytes/words)
speed = a few GHz( a few nanoseconds to read a byte/word)

External Memory (Hard Disk Drive)

size = a few tera bytes
speed : seek time = miliseconds
transfer rate= around billion bits per second

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 A simplifying assumption
(for the rest of the lecture)

It takes around a few nanoseconds to execute an instruction.

(This assumption is well supported by the modern day computers)

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EFFICIENT ALGORITHMS

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 What is an algorithm ?

Definition:
A finite sequence of well defined instructions
required to solve a given computational problem.

A prime objective of the course:

Design of efficient algorithms

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 WHY SHOULD WE CARE FOR
EFFICIENT ALGORITHMS

WE HAVE PROCESSORS RUNNING AT GIGAHERTZ?

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Revisiting problems from ESC101

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 Problem 1:
Fibonacci numbers

Fibonacci numbers
;
;
for all ;

An easy exercise : Using induction or otherwise, show that

>

Algorithms you must have implemented for computing (n) :

• Iterative
• recursive
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 Iterative Algorithm for ()

IFib(n)
if n=0 return 0;
else if n=1 return 1;
else {
a  0; b 1;
For(i=2 to n) do
{ temp  b;
b a+b;
a temp;
}
}
return b;

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 Recursive algorithm for ()

Rfib(n)
{ if n=0 return 0;
else if n=1 return 1;
else return(Rfib(n-1) + Rfib(n-2))
}

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 Homework 1
(compulsory)

Write a C program for the following problem:

Input: a number
: long long int (64 bit integer).
Output: F() mod

Time Taken Largest for Rfib Largest for IFib

1 minute
10 minutes
60 minutes

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 Problem 2:
Subset-sum problem

Input: An array A storing numbers, and a number

A 21 2123
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Output: Determine if there is a subset of numbers from A whose sum is .

The fastest existing algorithm till date : instructions

• Time for At least an year

• Time for At least 1000 years
on the fastest existing computer.

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 Problem 3:
Sorting

Input: An array A storing n numbers.

Output: Sorted A

A fact:
A significant fraction of the code of all the software is for sorting or searching only.

To sort 10 million numbers on the present day computers

• Selection sort will take at least a few hours.
• Merge sort will take only a few seconds.
• Quick sort will take ??? .

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How to design efficient algorithm for a problem ?
Design of algorithms and data structures is also
an Art

Requires:
• Creativity
• Hard work
• Practice
• Perseverance (most important) 18
 Summary of Algorithms
• There are many practically relevant problems for which there does not
exist any efficient algorithm till date . (How to deal with them ?)

• Efficient algorithms are important for theoretical as well as practical

purposes.

• Algorithm design is an art which demands a lot of creativity, intuition, and

perseverance.

• More and more applications in real life require efficient algorithms

– Search engines like Google exploits many clever algorithms.

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THE DATA STRUCTURES

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 An Example
Given: a telephone directory storing telephone no. of hundred million persons.
Aim: to answer a sequence of queries of the form
“what is the phone number of a given person ?”.

Solution 1 :
Keep the directory in an array.
do sequential search for each query.
Time per query: around 1/10th of a second

Solution 2:
Keep the directory in an array, and sort it according to names,
do binary search for each query.

Time per query: less than 100 nanoseconds

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 Aim of a data structure ?

To store/organize a given data in the memory of computer so that

each subsequent operation (query/update) can be performed quickly ?

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Range-Minima Problem

A Motivating example
to realize the importance of data structures

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 Range-Minima Problem
Given: an array A storing numbers,
Aim: a data structure to answer a sequence of queries of the following type
Range-minima() : report the smallest element from A[],…,A[]

Let = one million.

No. of queries = 10 millions
Range-Minima() = -6

A 3 5 1 8 19 0 -1 30 99 -6 10 2 40 27 44 67

𝑖=4 𝑗=11
 Range-Minima Problem

Applications:

• Computational geometry

• String matching

• As an efficient subroutine in a variety of algorithms

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 Range-Minima Problem
Solution 1:
Answer each query in a brute force manner using A itself.
Range-minima-trivial(i,j)
{ temp  i+1; Time for answering all queries:
min  A[i]; a few hours
While(temp <= j)
{ if (min > A[temp])
min  A[temp];
temp temp+1;
}
return min
}
Time taken to answer a query: few milliseconds

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 Range-Minima Problem
Solution 2:
Compute and store answer for each possible query in a × matrix B.
𝑗
Solution 2 is
Theoretically efficient but
𝑖 3
practically impossible

Size of B is too large to be

B kept in RAM. So we shall have
to keep most of it in the Hard
disk drive. Hence it will take
a few milliseconds per query.

B[][] stores the smallest element from A[],…,A[]

Space : roughly words.
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 Range-Minima Problem

Question: Does there exist a data structure for Range-minima which is

• Compact
(nearly the same size as the input array A)
• Can answer each query efficiently ?
(a few nanoseconds per query)

Homework 2: Ponder over the above question.

(we shall solve it soon)

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 Data structures to be covered in this
course
Elementary Data Structures
– Array
– List
– Stack
– Queue

Hierarchical Data Structures

– Binary Heap
– Binary Search Trees
Most fascinating and
powerful data structures
Augmented Data Structures
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• Look forward to working with all of you to make this course
enjoyable.

• This course will be light in contents (no formulas)

But it will be very demanding too.

• In case of any difficulty during the course,

just drop me an email without any delay.
I shall be happy to help 

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