Data Structures And Algorithms Series

Original Post

Blog series on Data Structures & Algorithms. Originally appeared on my blog, Asian Barbie.

When I walked into Algorithms class earlier this semester, my first thought was “Oh God.”

I had not been a fan of Discrete Mathematics, the precursor to the course, and the thought of having to learn these data structures and algorithms — and implement them programmatically — made me want to hide under a large rock and never come back out again.

Then I dove into the class, and realized that algorithms are really cool, and understood everything right away, and got a great job in Silicon Valley, and saved up money over the years and bought a nice house on the water where I lived happily ever after with my 50 cats.

Just kidding! I wish.

I mean, I do think that algorithms are cool, but they take time (and multiple resources) to really sink in. Data Structures and Algorithms is one of the core CS topics that I find the most challenging, which is precisely why I’m creating this blog series on them. I figure that the best way to learn is by teaching. This way, if I don’t know my shit, you all can call me out by leaving some constructive comments down below. 🙂 Impostor syndrome? What impostor syndrome?

This blog series is an experimental one in teaching to learn — by presenting information in a different way, it’ll stick better for me, too. I’ll be starting off by covering a few sorting and searching algorithms (also known as what I have to know for my midterm), and will add some additional topics that would be useful for, say, job interviews later on.

Here are the exact topics I’ll be posting about:

Advice & Fundamentals

• How I Study Data Structures and Algorithms

• Big-O Time Complexity

Tree Data Structures: Sororitree Rush

• Trees

• Types of Binary Trees

• Binary Search Trees

• AVL Trees

• Red-Black Trees

• 2-3 Trees

• B-Trees

• Tries

Other Data Structures

• Stacks

• Queues

• Linked Lists

• Hash Tables

• Heaps

• Graphs

• Directed Graphs

• Undirected Graphs

• Directed Acyclic Graphs

Algorithms

• Insertion Sort

• Merge Sort

• Quick Sort

• Selection Sort

• Bubble Sort

• Heap Sort

• Radix Sort (LSD, MSD)

• Binary Search

• Traversal

• Breadth-First Search (BFS)

• Depth-First Search (DFS)

• Dijkstra’s Algorithm

You’ll need to know basic programming in Java in order to follow along with the code portions, but don’t worry if you can’t do that — my goal is to make the conceptual portions simple to understand, even to a person without a background in computer science.

You ready? I’m not, but I’m excited! Let’s do this! We’ll both learn something in the process.