"Prior to beginning work on this interactive assignment, read Chapters 1 through 3 in Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis
; Chapter 1, Section 1.7: O Notation in Data Structures Essentials; the Complexity Analysis article; and the Time Complexity, Space Complexity, and the O-notation article.Explain to another newbie how to apply algorithmic design and data structure techniques in developing structured programs. Are some algorithms and data structure designs better than others? If so, explain why one design would be used before another design would be used. Discuss in the post how you would apply algorithmic design and data structure techniques in developing structured programs."
Wow, so, those articles about complexity are full of some really dense math-talk. Way denser than I intend to parse through for this assignment. Sorry. Here's my takeaway: Some algorithms are better than others at handling huge amounts of input data. As the amount of data grows, the differences between algorithms tends to stand out more sharply. Some algorithms will take more time, while others will take more memory capacity. The really bad ones will do both. The really good ones will do neither, but those are few and far between because they're difficult to make.
What confuses me, however, is that these concepts aren't ones that we've actually worked with throughout this course. We've learned how to implement a list, a stack, a queue, and even a tree, and we've also learned about different types of sorting and searching algorithms. But we haven't learned about designing algorithms or data structures, and I don't remember learning the definition of a "structured program," either. We supposedly learned about recursion, but despite my inability to display any recursive functionality in my code, I was still congratulated and given full marks for doing it anyway.
This makes me wonder whether I'm doing something wrong, making me unable to see my classmate's blog post, or whether the instructor didn't bother to click on the faulty link before complimenting its contents. I don't know what to think of this course anymore.
Guess it's time to more on to the final project, now.
