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Python Data Structures and Algorithms
Python Data Structures and Algorithms
Python Data Structures and Algorithms
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Python Data Structures and Algorithms

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About This Book
  • A step by step guide, which will provide you with a thorough discussion on the analysis and design of fundamental Python data structures.
  • Get a better understanding of advanced Python concepts such as big-o notation, dynamic programming, and functional data structures.
  • Explore illustrations to present data structures and algorithms, as well as their analysis, in a clear, visual manner.
Who This Book Is For

The book will appeal to Python developers. A basic knowledge of Python is expected.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 30, 2017
ISBN9781786465337
Python Data Structures and Algorithms

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    Python Data Structures and Algorithms - Benjamin Baka

    Python Data Structures and Algorithms

    Improve application performance with graphs, stacks, and queues

    Benjamin Baka

    BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

    Python Data Structures and Algorithms

    Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

    Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

    Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    First published: May 2017

    Production reference: 1260517

    Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

    Livery Place

    35 Livery Street

    Birmingham 

    B3 2PB, UK.

    ISBN 978-1-78646-735-5

    www.packtpub.com

    Credits

    About the Author

    Benjamin Baka works as a software developer and has over 10 years, experience in programming. He is a graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and a member of the Linux Accra User Group. Notable in his language toolset are C, C++, Java, Python, and Ruby. He has a huge interest in algorithms and finds them a good intellectual exercise.

    He is a technology strategist and software engineer at mPedigree Network, weaving together a dizzying array of technologies in combating counterfeiting activities, empowering consumers in Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya to name a few.

    In his spare time, he enjoys playing the bass guitar and listening to silence. You can find him on his blog.

    Many thanks to the team at Packt who have played a major part in bringing this book to

    light. I would also like to thank David Julian, the reviewer on this book, for all the assistance he extended through diverse means in preparing this book.

    I am forever indebted to Lorenzo E. Danielson and Guido Sohne for their immense help in ways I can never repay.

    About the Reviewer

    David Julian has over 30 years of experience as an IT educator and consultant.

    He has worked on a diverse range of projects, including assisting with the design of a machine learning system used to optimize agricultural crop production in controlled environments and numerous backend web development and data analysis projects.

    He has authored the book Designing Machine Learning Systems with Python and worked as a technical reviewer on Sebastian Raschka’s book Python Machine Learning, both by Packt Publishing.

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    Table of Contents

    Preface

    What this book covers

    What you need for this book

    Who this book is for

    Conventions

    Reader feedback

    Customer support

    Downloading the example code

    Errata

    Piracy

    Questions

    Python Objects, Types, and Expressions

    Understanding data structures and algorithms

    Python for data

    The Python environment

    Variables and expressions

    Variable scope

    Flow control and iteration

    Overview of data types and objects

    Strings

    Lists

    Functions as first class objects

    Higher order functions

    Recursive functions

    Generators and co-routines

    Classes and object programming

    Special methods

    Inheritance

    Data encapsulation and properties

    Summary

    Python Data Types and Structures

    Operations and expressions

    Boolean operations

    Comparison and Arithmetic operators

    Membership, identity, and logical operations

    Built-in data types

    None type

    Numeric Types

    Representation error

    Sequences

    Tuples

    Dictionaries

    Sorting dictionaries

    Dictionaries for text analysis

    Sets

    Immutable sets

    Modules for data structures and algorithms

    Collections

    Deques

    ChainMaps

    Counter objects

    Ordered dictionaries

    defaultdict

    Named tuples

    Arrays

    Summary

    Principles of Algorithm Design

    Algorithm design paradigms

    Recursion and backtracking

    Backtracking

    Divide and conquer - long multiplication

    Can we do better? A recursive approach

    Runtime analysis

    Asymptotic analysis

    Big O notation

    Composing complexity classes

    Omega notation (Ω)

    Theta notation (ϴ)

    Amortized analysis

    Summary

    Lists and Pointer Structures

    Arrays

    Pointer structures

    Nodes

    Finding endpoints

    Node

    Other node types

    Singly linked lists

    Singly linked list class

    Append operation

    A faster append operation

    Getting the size of the list

    Improving list traversal

    Deleting nodes

    List search

    Clearing a list

    Doubly linked lists

    A doubly linked list node

    Doubly linked list

    Append operation

    Delete operation

    List search

    Circular lists

    Appending elements

    Deleting an element

    Iterating through a circular list

    Summary

    Stacks and Queues

    Stacks

    Stack implementation

    Push operation

    Pop operation

    Peek

    Bracket-matching application

    Queues

    List-based queue

    Enqueue operation

    Dequeue operation

    Stack-based queue

    Enqueue operation

    Dequeue operation

    Node-based queue

    Queue class

    Enqueue operation

    Dequeue operation

    Application of queues

    Media player queue

    Summary

    Trees

    Terminology

    Tree nodes

    Binary trees

    Binary search trees

    Binary search tree implementation

    Binary search tree operations

    Finding the minimum and maximum nodes

    Inserting nodes

    Deleting nodes

    Searching the tree

    Tree traversal

    Depth-first traversal

    In-order traversal and infix notation

    Pre-order traversal and prefix notation

    Post-order traversal and postfix notation.

    Breadth-first traversal

    Benefits of a binary search tree

    Expression trees

    Parsing a reverse Polish expression

    Balancing trees

    Heaps

    Summary

    Hashing and Symbol Tables

    Hashing

    Perfect hashing functions

    Hash table

    Putting elements

    Getting elements

    Testing the hash table

    Using [] with the hash table

    Non-string keys

    Growing a hash table

    Open addressing

    Chaining

    Symbol tables

    Summary

    Graphs and Other Algorithms

    Graphs

    Directed and undirected graphs

    Weighted graphs

    Graph representation

    Adjacency list

    Adjacency matrix

    Graph traversal

    Breadth-first search

    Depth-first search

    Other useful graph methods

    Priority queues and heaps

    Inserting

    Pop

    Testing the heap

    Selection algorithms

    Summary

    Searching

    Linear Search

    Unordered linear search

    Ordered linear search

    Binary search

    Interpolation search

    Choosing a search algorithm

    Summary

    Sorting

    Sorting algorithms

    Bubble sort

    Insertion sort

    Selection sort

    Quick sort

    List partitioning

    Pivot selection

    Implementation

    Heap sort

    Summary

    Selection Algorithms

    Selection by sorting

    Randomized selection

    Quick select

    Partition step

    Deterministic selection

    Pivot selection

    Median of medians

    Partitioning step

    Summary

    Design Techniques and Strategies

    Classification of algorithms

    Classification by implementation

    Recursion

    Logical

    Serial or parallel

    Deterministic versus nondeterministic algorithms

    Classification by complexity

    Complexity curves

    Classification by design

    Divide and conquer

    Dynamic programming

    Greedy algorithms

    Technical implementation

    Dynamic programming

    Memoization

    Tabulation

    The Fibonacci series

    The Memoization technique

    The tabulation technique

    Divide and conquer

    Divide

    Conquer

    Merge

    Merge sort

    Greedy algorithms

    Coin-counting problem

    Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm

    Complexity classes

    P versus NP

    NP-Hard

    NP-Complete

    Summary

    Implementations, Applications, and Tools

    Tools of the trade

    Data preprocessing

    Why process raw data?

    Missing data

    Feature scaling

    Min-max scalar

    Standard scalar

    Binarizing data

    Machine learning

    Types of machine learning

    Hello classifier

    A supervised learning example

    Gathering data

    Bag of words

    Prediction

    An unsupervised learning example

    K-means algorithm

    Prediction

    Data visualization

    Bar chart

    Multiple bar charts

    Box plot

    Pie chart

    Bubble chart

    Summary

    Preface

    A knowledge of data structures and the algorithms that bring them to life is the key to building successful data applications. With this knowledge, we have a powerful way to unlock the secrets buried in large amounts of data. This skill is becoming more important in a data-saturated world, where the amount of data being produced dwarfs our ability to analyze it.  In this book, you will learn the essential Python data structures and the most common algorithms. This book will provide basic knowledge of Python and an insight into the exciting world of data algorithms. We will look at algorithms that provide solutions to the most common problems in data analysis, including sorting and searching data, as well as being able to extract important statistics from data. With this easy-to-read book, you will learn how to create complex data structures such as linked lists, stacks, and queues, as well as sorting algorithms such as bubble sort and insertion sort. You will learn the common techniques and structures used in tasks such as preprocessing, modeling, and transforming data. We will also discuss how to organize your code in a manageable, consistent, and extendable way. You will learn how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications.

    A good understanding of data structures and algorithms cannot be overemphasized. It is an important arsenal to have in being able to understand new problems and find elegant solutions to them. By gaining a deeper understanding of algorithms and data structures, you may find uses for them in many more ways than originally intended. You will develop a consideration for the code you write and how it affects the amount of memory and CPU cycles to say the least. Code will not be written for the sake of it, but rather with a mindset to do more using minimal resources. When programs that have been thoroughly analyzed and scrutinized are used in a real-life setting, the performance is a delight to experience. Sloppy code is always a recipe for poor performance. Whether you like algorithms purely from the standpoint of them being an intellectual exercise or them serving as a source of inspiration in solving a problem, it is an engagement worthy of pursuit.

    The Python language has further opened the door for many professionals and students to come to appreciate programming. The language is fun to work with and concise in its description of problems. We leverage the language's mass appeal to examine a number of widely studied and standardized data structures and algorithms.

    The book begins with a concise tour of the Python programming language. As such, it is not required that you know Python before picking up this book.

    What this book covers

    Chapter 1, Python Objects, Types, and Expressions, introduces you to the basic types and objects of Python. We will give an overview of the language features, execution environment, and programming styles. We will also review the common programming techniques and language functionality.

    Chapter 2, Python Data Types and Structures, explains each of the five numeric and five sequence data types, as well as one mapping and two set data types, and examine the operations and expressions applicable to each type. We will also give examples of typical use cases.

    Chapter 3, Principles of Algorithm Design, covers how we can build additional structures with specific capabilities using the existing Python data structures. In general, the data structures we create need to conform to a number of principles. These principles include robustness, adaptability, reusability, and separating the structure from a function. We look at the role iteration plays and introduce recursive data structures.

    Chapter 4, Lists and Pointer Structures, covers linked lists, which are one of the most common data structures and are often used to implement other structures, such as stacks and queues. In this chapter, we describe their operation and implementation. We compare their behavior to arrays and discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of each.

    Chapter 5, Stacks and Queues, discusses the behavior and demonstrates some implementations of these linear data structures. We give examples of typical applications.

    Chapter 6, Trees, will look at how to implement a binary tree. Trees form the basis of many of the most important advanced data structures. We will examine how to traverse trees and retrieve and insert values. We will also look at how to create structures such as heaps.

    Chapter 7, Hashing and Symbol Tables, describes symbol tables, gives some typical implementations, and discusses various applications. We will look at the process of hashing, give an implementation of a hash table, and discuss the various design considerations.

    Chapter 8, Graphs and Other Algorithms, looks at some of the more specialized structures, including graphs and spatial structures. Representing data as a set of nodes and vertices is convenient in a number of applications, and from this, we can create structures such as directed and undirected graphs. We will also introduce some other structures and concepts such as priority queues, heaps, and selection algorithms.

    Chapter 9, Searching, discusses the most common searching algorithms and gives examples of their use for various data structures. Searching a data structure is a fundamental task and there are a number of approaches.

    Chapter 10, Sorting, looks at the most common approaches to sorting. This will include bubble sort, insertion sort, and selection sort.

    Chapter 11, Selection Algorithms, covers algorithms that involve finding statistics, such as the minimum, maximum, or median elements in a list. There are a number of approaches and one of the most common approaches is to first apply a sort operation. Other approaches include partition and linear selection.

    Chapter 12, Design Techniques and Strategies, relates to how we look for solutions for similar problems when we are trying to solve a new problem. Understanding how we can classify algorithms and the types of problem that they most naturally solve is a key aspect of algorithm design. There are many ways in which we can classify algorithms, but the most useful classifications tend to revolve around either the implementation method or the design method.

    Chapter 13, Implementations, Applications, and Tools, discusses a variety of real-world applications. These include data analysis, machine learning, prediction, and visualization. In addition, there are libraries and tools that make our work with algorithms more productive and enjoyable.

    What you need for this book

    The code in this book will require you to run Python 2.7.x or higher. Python's default interactive environment can also be used to run the snippets of code. In order to use other third-party libraries, pip should be installed on your system.

    Who this book is for

    This book would appeal to Python developers. Basic knowledge of Python is preferred but is not a requirement. No previous knowledge of computer concepts is assumed. Most of the concepts are explained with everyday scenarios to make it very easy to understand.

    Conventions

    In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

    Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: This repetitive construct could be a simple while loop or any other kind of loop.

    A block of code is set as follows:

    When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

    Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

    New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen.

    Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

    Tips and tricks appear like this.

    Reader feedback

    Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

    To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

    If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

    Customer support

    Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

    Downloading the example code

    You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

    You can download the code files by following these steps:

    Log in or register to our website using your e-mail address and password.

    Hover the mouse pointer on the SUPPORT tab at the top.

    Click on Code Downloads & Errata.

    Enter the name of the book in the Search box.

    Select the book for which you're looking to download the code files.

    Choose from the drop-down menu where you purchased this book from.

    Click on Code Download.

    Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

    WinRAR / 7-Zip for Windows

    Zipeg / iZip / UnRarX for Mac

    7-Zip / PeaZip for Linux

    The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Python-Data-Structures-and-Algorithma. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

    Errata

    Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

    To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.

    Piracy

    Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

    Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material.

    We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.

    Questions

    If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.

    Python Objects, Types, and Expressions

    Python is the language of choice for many advanced data tasks for a very good reason. Python is one of the easiest advanced programming languages to learn. Intuitive structures and semantics mean that for people who are not computer scientists, but maybe biologists, statisticians, or the directors of a start-up, Python is a straightforward way to perform a wide variety of data tasks. It is not just a scripting language, but a full-featured object-oriented programming language.

    In Python, there are many useful data structures and algorithms built in to the language. Also, because Python is an object-based language, it is relatively easy to create custom data objects. In this book, we will examine both Python internal libraries,

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