COM- 201

Data Structures and Algorithms

Assist. Prof. Dr. Özge ÖZTİMUR KARADAĞ
ALKÜ
Department of Computer Engineering
COM 201
• Course material will be available at lms.alanya.edu.tr

• Suggested Books:
• Mark A. Weiss; “Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in C++”, 4th Ed., Pearson,
2013.
• Theory and Problems of Data Structures, Seymour Lipschutz, McGraw-Hill

• Grading
• Programming Assignments: %20 (10+10)
• Midterm: %30
• Final Exam: %50
Syllabus
Week Topic
• Tentative outline of the course 1 --
2 --
3 Introduction and Overview
4 Arrays, Records and Pointers
5 Arrays, Records and Pointers
6 Linked Lists
7 Linked Lists Programming Assignment – 1
8 Midterm
9 String Processing
10 Stack, Queues
11 Recursion
12 Trees
13 Trees Programming Assignment – 2
14 Graphs
15 Graphs
What have you covered?
• Construct an algorithm to solve a problem,
• Represent the algorithm as a dataflow diagram,
• Given a dataflow diagram derive the algorithmic steps.
• C programming language
• …

• Data structures course introduces concepts in a general perspective,

• Concepts introduced in this course can be generalized /adapted to all
programming languages.
• We will do applications in C.
Data
• Data are simply values or sets of values.
• A data item: single unit of values
• Group items: data items that are divided into subitems
• Elementary items: data items that are not divided into subitems
• Ex:
• an employee’s name may be divided into
• First name
• Middle name
• Last name
• Social security number is a single item
Collection of Data
• is usually organized as:
• Fields,
• Records,
• Files

• An entity is smth. that has certain attributes/properties which can be assigned

values.
• Values can be either numeric or nonnumeric
• Example to attributes and their corresponding values:
Attributes Name Age Sex SSN
Values Genç, Ayşe 32 F 134-23-5544
Collection of Data
• Entities with similar attributes form an entity set.
• Each attribute of an entity set has a range of values, the set of all
possible values that could be assigned to the particular attribute.

• A field is a single elementary unit of information representing an

attribute of an entity.
• A record is the collection of field values of a given entity,
• A file is the collection of records of the entities in a given entity set.
Collection of Data
• Each record in a file may contain many field items, but the value in a
certain field may uniquely determine the record in the file. Such a
field K is called a primary key, and the values k1, k2, … in such a field
are called keys or key values.
• Example: inventory of an automobile dealership
• Serial number,
• Type,
• Year,
• Price,
• Accessories
Organization of Data
• Data are also organized into more complex types of structures. The study of
such data structures, which form the subject matter of this course includes
the following steps:
• Logical or mathematical description of the structure,
• Implementation of the structure on a computer,
• Quantitative analysis of the structure, which includes determining the amount of
memory needed to store the structure and the time required to process the
structure.

• In the scope of this course, we mainly deal with the data stored in the main
memory, while the database course deals with the data in the secondary
storage.
Data Structures
• The logical or mathematical model of a particular organization of data
is called a data structure.
• The choice of a particular data model depends on two considerations:
• it must be rich enough in structure to mirror the actual relationships of data
in the real World.
• Structure should be simple enough that one can effectively process the data
when necessary.
Data Structures
• Arrays
• Linear (One dimensional) array: list of a finite number n of similar data
elements referenced respectively by a set of n consecutive numbers, usually
1,2,3,…,n
• If the name of the array is A, then the elements of A are denoted by
• The subscript notation: a1,a2,a3,…,an
• The parenthesis notation: A(1), A(2),A(3),…,A(n)
• The bracket notation: A[1],A[2],A[3],…,A[n]

• Regardless of the notation, the number K in A[K] is called a subscript and A[K] is called a
subscripted variable.
Data Structures
• Arrays
• Example: A linear array STUDENT consists of the names of six students

• Linear arrays are called one-dimensional arrays because each element in such
an array is referenced by one subscript.
• A two dimensional array is a collection of similar data elements where each
element is referenced by two subscripts.
Data Structures
• Arrays
• Example: A chain of 28 stores, each store having 4 departments, may list its weekly
sales as follows:
Dept. 1 2 3 4

Store
1 2872 805 3211 1560
2 2196 1223 1744
3 3257 1017 1951
…. …. … … …
28 2618 931 2333 982

• Can be stored using a two dimensional array, first subscript denotes the store and
the second subscript denotes the department.
• If the name of the array is SALES;
• SALES[1,1]=2872, SALES[1,2]=805, …SALES[28,4]=982
Data Structures
• Example: A brokerage firm maintains a • How to store this data?
file where each record contains a
customer’s name and his or her
salesperson, and suppose the file • Is it the most useful way?
contains the following data:
Customer Salesperson
1 Adams Smith
2 Brown Ray
3 Clark Jones
4 Drew Ray
5 Evans Smith
6 Farmer Jones
7 Geller Ray
8 Hill Smith
9 Infeld Ray
Data Structures

• What if the firm needs the list of customers

for a given salesperson??
• Have to search through the entire
customer file.

• Alternative?
Data Structures
• Each salesperson now have a set
of pointers giving the position of
his/her customers.
• Disadvantage?
• Each salesperson may have several
pointers and the set of pointers
will change as customers are
added and deleted.
Data Structures
• Linked Lists • Each salesperson has one pointer which
points to his/her first customer, whose
pointer in turn points to the second customer,
and so on, the salesperson’s last customer
indicated by a 0.
• Advantage:
• Easy to obtain the entire list of customers for
a given salesperson,
• Easy to insert and delete customers.
Data Structures
• Trees
• The data structure which reflects a hierarchical relationship between various
elements, a rooted tree graph.

Employee

SSN Name Address Age Salary Dependents

Last First Middle Street Area

City State ZIP

Data Structures
• Trees
• Ex: Algebraic expression
• (2𝑥 + 𝑦)(𝑎 − 7𝑏)3

+ ↑

* y - 3

2 X a *

7 b
Data Structures
• Stack (Last in First Out – LIFO - System)
• A linear list in which insertions and deletions can take place only at one end,
called the top.
Data Structures
• Queue (First in first out – FIFO – system)
• is a linear list in which
• deletions can take place only at one end of the list, the ‘front’ of the list,
• İnsertions can take place only at the other end of the list, the ‘rear’ of the list.
Data Structures
• Graph
• Pairs of data have relationship other than hierarchy.
• Ex: Airline flights
Data Structure Operations
• The particular data structure that one chooses for a given situation depends
largely on the frequency with which specific operations are performed.
• Most frequently used operations:
• Traversing: Accessing each record exactly once so that certain items in the record may be
processed. (This accessing an processing is sometimes referred as ‘visiting’ the record.)
• Searching: Finding the location of the record with a given key value, or finding the locations
of all the records which satisfy one or more conditions.
• Inserting: Adding a new record to the structure.
• Deleting: Removing a record from the structure.
• Some other operations:
• Sorting: Arranging the records in some logical order (e.g. alphabetically according to some
NAME key, or in numerical order according to some NUMBER key, such as social security
number or account number)
• Merging: Combining the records in two different sorted files into a single sorted file
Algorithms: Complexity, Time-Space Tradeoff
• Algorithm is a well-defined list of steps for solving a particular problem.
• Time and space it uses are two major measures of the efficiency of an
algorithm.
• The complexity of an algorithm is the function which gives the running time
and/or space in terms of the input size.

• Depending on the data structure the efficiency of the algorihm varies.

• Choice of the data structure depends on:
• Type of data,
• Frequency of data operations etc.
• Sometimes the choice of data structure involves a time-space tradeoff: by
increasing the amount of space for sorting the data, one may be able to
reduce the time needed for processing the data, or vice versa.
Algorithms: Complexity, Time-Space Tradeoff
• Ex: Searching algorithms
• An organization contains a membership file in which each record contains the
following data for a given member:
• Name, address, telephone number, age, sex

• For a given name, find his/her telephone number

• Linear search: Search each record of the file, one at a time, until finding the given Name and hence
the telephone number.  C(n)=n/2

• Binary search: If the names are sorted alphabetically, compare the Name with the name in the
middle of the list; this tells which half of the list contains Name. Then compare Name with the
name in the middle of the correct half to determine which quarter of the list contains Name.
Continue the process until finding Name in the list.  C(n)=log2n
• Disadvantage of Binary search:
• It assumes direct access to the middle of the list, which means that the list is stored as
array. Unfortunately, inserting an element in an array requires elements to be moved
down the list, and deleting an element from an array requires elements to be moved up
the list.
Algorithms: Complexity, Time-Space Tradeoff
• An example of time-space tradeoff: A file of records contains names,
SSN and additional information.
• Sorting the file alphabetically and using Binary search is a very efficient way to
find the record for a given name.
• If we are given only the SSN, we would have to do a linear search which is
extremely time consuming for a very large number of records.

• Solution??
• Have another file which is sorted numerically according to SSN 
• doubles the space required
Algorithms: Complexity, Time-Space Tradeoff
• Have the main file sorted numerically by SSN, have an auxiliary array with only
two columns, the first column containing the alphabetized list of the names and
the second column containing the pointers which give the locations of the
corresponding records in the main file. This is the frequently used solution, as it
additional space is minimal.
Algorithms: Complexity, Time-Space Tradeoff
• Suppose a file is sorted numerically by SSN. As new records are inserted into the
file, data must be constantly moved to new locations in order to maintain the
sorted order. One simple way to minimize the movement of data is to have the
SSN serve as the address of each record. There will be no movement of data
while inserting, there will be instant Access to any record.
• What is the disadvantage?
• It would require one billion (109) memory locations for only hundreds or thousands of
records.  tradeoff of space for time is not worth the expense.
Sample Questions
• Consider the linear array NAME which is sorted alphabetically
• Find NAME[2], NAME[7]
• Suppose Davis is to be inserted into the array. How many names must be
moved to new location?
• Suppose Gupta is to be deleted from the array. How many names must be
moved to new locations?
Sample Questions
• Consider the linear array NAME in the figure. The
values of FIRST and LINK[K] in the figure
determine a linear ordering of the names as
follows. FIRST gives the location of the first name
in the list, and LINK[K] gives the location of the
name following NAME[K], with 0 denoting the
end of the list. Find the linear ordering of the
names.
Sample Questions
• Consider the algebraic expression (7x+y)(5a-b)3. Draw the corresponding
tree diagram.
• Find
the scope of the exponential operation. (the scope of node v in a tree is
the subtree consisting of v and the nodes following v.)
• Use a ↑ for exponential and * for multiplication.
Sample Questions
• The Daily flights of an airline company is
given CITY lists the cities, ORIG[K] and
DEST[K] denote the cities of origin and
destination, respectively, of the flight
NUMBER[K]. Draw the corresponding
directed graph of the data.
Sample Questions
• For the previous question, how the should be stored:
• Find the origin and destination of a flight, given the flight number.
• Given city A and city B, find whether there is a flight from A to B, and if there
is find its flight number.
References
• Theory and Problems of Data Structures, Seymour Lipschutz, McGraw-Hill