Book Image

Python Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Benjamin Baka
Book Image

Python Data Structures and Algorithms

By: Benjamin Baka

Overview of this book

Data structures allow you to organize data in a particular way efficiently. They are critical to any problem, provide a complete solution, and act like reusable code. In this book, you will learn the essential Python data structures and the most common algorithms. With this easy-to-read book, you will be able to understand the power of linked lists, double linked lists, and circular linked lists. You will be able to create complex data structures such as graphs, stacks and queues. We will explore the application of binary searches and binary search trees. 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. The book will explore in detail sorting algorithms such as bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, and merge sort. By the end of the book, you will learn how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
5
Stacks and Queues
7
Hashing and Symbol Tables

Chapter 8. Graphs and Other Algorithms

In this chapter, we are going to talk about graphs. This is a concept that comes from the branch of mathematics called graph theory.

Graphs are used to solve a number of computing problems. They also have much less structure than other data structures we have looked at and things like traversal can be much more unconventional, as we shall see.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

  • Understand what graphs are
  • Know the types of graphs and their constituents
  • Know how to represent a graph and traverse it
  • Get a fundamental idea of what priority queues are
  • Be able to implement a priority queue
  • Be able to determine the ith smallest element in a list