Problem Solving with Data Structures Using Java: A Multimedia Approach

About

Features

A Creative and Contemporary Approach: This book teaches data structures by using a media and simulation context (specifically, trees and linked lists of images and music), making concepts more concrete and much more interesting for students. For example, students will create linked lists of musical phrases in order to create a flexible structure for composing music (see Chapter 6.5). This engaging approach makes assignments more interesting so students are motivated to spend more time on the assignment and, as a result, learn to solve problems more efficiently and effectively.

From Concrete to Abstract: Research on beginning programmers shows that starting with abstractions is not as effective as starting with concrete instances and then pulling out the abstractions. This text walks through creating some standard data structures in multiple contexts (sound and images) before pulling out the abstraction, making it easier for students to learn why the abstractions are useful.  (See Chapter 10)

Novel Examples:  increase students' interest in the concepts. For example, students will use a map to create a histogram for an image filter. (See Chapter 11); use music notes to develop linked lists (see Chapter 6) and more. 

A Context for All Data Structures: Although not typically covered in data structures courses, this text offers coverage of both an existing simulation package (Greenfoot) and the creation and use of a simulation package. This approach helps to provide a context for all data structures. Students will see how the concepts they are learning apply in a variety of fields that depend on computer simulations. (See Chapters 14 and 16)

 

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Description

• Copyright 2011
• Dimensions: 7-3/8" x 9-1/4"
• Pages: 512
• Edition: 1st

• Book
• ISBN-10: 0-13-606061-7
• ISBN-13: 978-0-13-606061-1

Problem Solving with Data Structures, First Edition is not a traditional data structures textbook that teaches concepts in an abstract, and often dry, context that focuses on data structures using numbers. Instead, this book takes a more creative approach that uses media and simulations (specifically, trees and linked lists of images and music), to make concepts more concrete, more relatable, and therefore much more motivating for students.

This book is appropriate for both majors and non-majors.  It provides an introduction to object-oriented programming in Java, arrays, linked lists, trees, stacks, queues, lists, maps, and heaps.  It also covers an existing simulation package (Greenfoot) and how to create continuous and discrete event simulations.

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Sample Content

Table of Contents

Contents iii

I Introduction to Java: Object-Oriented Programming for Modeling a World    

 

1 Objects for Modeling a World   

    1.1 Making Representations of a World

    1.2 Why Java?

2 Introduction to Java      

    2.1 What’s Java about?

    2.2 Basic (Syntax) Rules of Java

    2.3 Using Java to Model the World

    2.4 Manipulating Pictures in Java

    2.5 Exploring Sound in Java

    2.6 Exploring Music in Java

3 Methods in Java: Manipulating Pictures    

    3.1 Reviewing Java Basics

    3.2 Java is about Classes and Methods

    3.3 Methods that return something: Compositing images

    3.4 Creating classes that do something

4 Objects as Agents: Manipulating Turtles      

    4.1 Turtles: An Early Computational Object

    4.2 Drawing with Turtles

    4.3 Creating animations with turtles and frames

    4.4 Making a Slow Moving Turtle with sleep and exceptions

5 Arrays: A Static Data Structure for Sounds    

    5.1 Manipulating Sampled Sounds

    5.2 Inserting and Deleting in an Array

    5.3 How Slow Does It Get?

II Introducing Linked Lists  

 

6 Structuring Music using Linked Lists  

    6.1 JMusic and Imports

    6.2 Making a Simple Song Object

    6.3 Making a Song Something to Explore as a Linked List

7 Structuring Images using Linked Lists 

    7.1 Simple arrays of pictures

    7.2 Listing the Pictures, Left-to-Right

    7.3 Listing the Pictures, Layering

    7.4 Reversing a List

    7.5 Animation

    7.6 Lists with Two Kinds of Elements

III Trees: Hierarchical Structures for Media

 

8 Trees of Images  

    8.1 Representing scenes with trees

    8.2 Our First Scene Graph: Attack of the Killer Wolvies

    8.3 The Classes in the SceneGraph

    8.4 Building a scene graph

    8.5 Implementing the Scene Graph

    8.6 Exercises

9 Lists and Trees for Structuring Sounds    

    9.1 Composing with Sampled Sounds and Linked Lists: Recursive Traversals

    9.2 Using Trees to Structure Sampled Sounds .

10 Generalizing Lists and Trees

    10.1 Refactoring a General Linked List Node Class

    10.2 Making a New Kind of List

    10.3 The Uses and Characteristics of Arrays, Lists, and Trees

    10.4 Binary Search Trees: Trees that are fast to search

11 Abstract Data Types: Separating the Meaning from the Implementation  

    11.1 Introducing Stacks

    11.2 Introducing Queues

    11.3 Using an ArrayList

    11.4 Using a map ADT

12 Circular Linked Lists and Graphs: Lists and Trees That Loop

    12.1 Making Sprite Animation with Circular Linked Lists

    12.2 Generalizing a Circular Linked List

    12.3 Graphs: Trees with Loops

13 User Interface Structures   

    13.1 A Toolkit for Building User Interfaces

    13.2 Rendering of User Interfaces

    13.3Creating an Interactive User Interface

    13.4 Running from the Command Line

IV Simulations: Problem Solving with Data Structures

 

14 Using an Existing Simulation Package   

    14.1 Introducing Simulations

    14.2 Overview of Greenfoot

    14.3 Greenfoot Basics

    14.4 Creating new classes

    14.5 Breakout

15 Introducing UML and Continuous Simulations     

    15.1 Our First Model and Simulation: Wolves and Deer

    15.2 Modeling in Objects

    15.3 Implementing the Simulation Class

    15.4 Implementing a Wolf

    15.5 Implementing Deer

    15.6 Implementing AgentNode

    15.7 Extending the Simulation

16 Abstracting Simulations: Creating a Simulation Package

    16.1 Creating a Generalized Simulation Package

    16.2 Re-Making the Wolves and Deer with our Simulation Package

    16.3 Making a Disease Propagation Simulation

    16.4 Walking through the Simulation Package

    16.5 Finally! Making Wildebeests and Villagers

17 Discrete Event Simulation   

    17.1 Describing a Marketplace

    17.2 Differences between Continuous and Discrete Event Simulations

    17.3 Different Kinds of Random

    17.4 Ordering Events by Time

    17.5 Implementing a Discrete Event Simulation

    17.6 The Final Word: The Thin Line between Structure and Behavior

 

Index

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