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Data Structures - Student Version

Data structures organize data in memory to achieve design goals like fast access, easy resizing, and memory efficiency. Common data structures include arrays, linked lists, and hash tables. The document outlines Python's built-in data structures like lists, tuples, dicts, sets and frozensets and how to use them, including slicing lists and tuples and using set operators.

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17 views19 pages

Data Structures - Student Version

Data structures organize data in memory to achieve design goals like fast access, easy resizing, and memory efficiency. Common data structures include arrays, linked lists, and hash tables. The document outlines Python's built-in data structures like lists, tuples, dicts, sets and frozensets and how to use them, including slicing lists and tuples and using set operators.

Uploaded by

extreme fattypunch
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Data structures

Chris Rowlands
Stuff-I-got-interested-in-this-week group
Data Structures

Learning outcomes
• Understand what a data structure is
• Be able to select a suitable data structure based on some simple
requirements
• Be familiar with arrays, linked lists and hash tables
• Be able to use all of Python’s built-in data structures (list, tuple, dict, set,
frozenset)
Data Structures

Outline
• Introduction to data structures
– Arrays
– Linked lists
• Python data structures
– Lists
– Tuples
– Dicts (hash tables)
– Sets
Data Structures

What is a data structure?


• How do we organize large amounts of data in memory, to achieve our design
goals?
– Easy to resize if needed (both elements and the whole structure)
– Fast to read, write (elements, subsets / slices, and the whole structure)
– Easy to perform operations on the structure (max, mean, sum etc.)
– Works with different element data types, including indeterminate sizes
– Memory-efficient: doesn’t take up much space, not much overhead.
• Which goals are important depends on what problem you’re solving
Data Structures

Examples of data structures


• Books on a bookshelf
– 1D array
• Family tree
– Tree
• Treasure hunt
– Linked list
Data Structures

Arrays
• How would you store a monochrome 2D image
in memory efficiently?
– Each pixel has the same bit depth
– Store each pixel in row 1, then row 2, etc.
• Just need to know where the first element is,
plus the height, width and bit depth!
– Plus data type in a general case…
• Can work for 3D, 4D etc. data too.
Data Structures

Arrays
• Pros:
– Memory efficient (little overhead, ~100% use of space)
– Fast to read / write (easy to calculate where each pixels is in memory)
• Cons:
– Can’t resize the array quickly (or add a new element in the middle easily)
– Can’t have elements of different data types, or lengths
– Generally requires large, contiguous blocks of memory
• Python doesn’t natively support arrays, strangely.
Data Structures

Linked lists
• Each node has the address of the next
• Nodes can be anywhere in memory
– No need for large contiguous blocks
– Nodes can be different sizes if needed
– Resizing the structure is easy
• BUT:
– Traversing the structure is slow
– There is substantial memory overhead
Data Structures

Python data structures - lists


Data [1]
• Actually a dynamic array of indices, pointing Address
to arbitrary objects 1
• Define a list using square brackets Data [2]
503
– Mixing list element types is OK
• 0118999 Data [3]
Slice the list using square brackets too
– myList[1] returns the second element 3
in the list because we index from zero Data [4]
Data Structures

Python data structures - lists


• You can slice multiple elements at once using a colon
– myList[start:end] Note that the slice doesn’t include end
• You don’t have to specify the start or end – they will default appropriately
– myList[:] is commonly used to make a copy of the list
• It is possible to take slices with different steps too
– myList[start:end:step]
• Mix and match start, end and step defaults as desired
Data Structures

Python data structures - lists


• Negative indices count from the end of the list!
– -1 is the final element of the list, -2 is the penultimate element etc.
• Works for step as well – counts backwards from the end
– Don’t forget to reverse the start and end values or you’ll get an empty list
• Nested lists can be accessed using more sets of square brackets
Data Structures

Python data structures - tuples


• Essentially immutable lists
– Fast lookup
– Memory-efficient
– Changing requires redefining the whole tuple
• Created similarly to lists, but with () as opposed to []
• You can still index and slice using myTuple[]
Data Structures

Quiz
Starting with this list:
myList = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Which slice parameters will produce the following output?

[2,3,4,5]

[7,5,3,1]

[9,6,3] (no positive numbers allowed)


Data Structures

Hash tables
• How quickly can you look up
someone’s number in a phone book?
– log(N) operations
• Determine the address of the data
using a hash function
– Only one operation needed!
Data Structures

What is a hash function?


• Function to ‘map’ an arbitrary-length key to a fixed-length digest
– e.g. MD5, SHA-1
• Output is uniform – all outputs are equally likely
– Minimal likelihood of finding two keys with the same digest: a collision.
• Example: folded hash 0
1 1
0 0
1 0
1 0
1 1
0 0
1 1
0 BA
26
55
– hash(8F8F 26 55 BA
BA) = 46

0
1 1
0 0
1 0
1 0
1 1
0 1
0 0
1 46
FC
A9
8F
Data Structures

Python data structures - dicts


• Built-in implementation of a hash table
• Enclose in curly brackets
• Separate keys and values with colons, and separate items with commas
• No duplicate keys allowed!

phonenumbers = {
"Emergency services": '0118 999 88199 9119725
3',
"Annoying directory enquiries": '118 118',
"Jenny": '867-5309',
"Dr Turk": '916-225-5887'
}
print(phonenumbers["Jenny"])
867-5309
Data Structures

Python data structures – sets and frozensets


• Very similar to formal mathematical sets
• Elements can be any hashable datatype
– No duplicates
• Unordered (you can’t get the nth element)
• Created with curly brackets: fruit = {‘apple’, ‘banana’, ‘pear’}
• Frozensets can be made using sets: smoothie = frozenset(fruit)
Data Structures

Set operators
• Union (everything in set A or set B): A|B
– No duplicate elements
• Intersection (only elements which are in both sets): A&B
• Difference (elements in A that aren’t in B): A-B
• Symmetric difference (elements in A and B but not in both): A^B
Data Structures

Summary
• Learned what a data structure is, and some classic examples
– Array, linked list, hash table
• Learned how to use Python’s built-in data structures
– Lists and tuples, including slicing
– Dicts
– Sets and frozensets, including set operators

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