Data Structures, Algorithms, and Invariants: A Practical Guide

Data Structures, Algorithms, and Invariants: A Practical Guide provides students with the knowledge and understanding they need to make sensible decisions regarding the choice of an abstract data type (ADT) for particular use cases. The book is a practical guide that helps readers with the process of building a software application utilizing a variety of list-based, tree-based, and graph-based ADTs.

The opening chapters discuss solving problems, the concept of computational complexity, different types of ADTs, and why they are needed in software development. Additional chapters address unordered, positional, and ordered ADTs, the process of sorting, ways of determining order, and graphs. Each chapter features an introduction, learning objectives, key terms, takeaways, QR codes that link out to additional content such as videos, and chapter review questions to support the reading and learning experience. Additionally, students gain access to a companion source code repository that provides implementations of many of the ADTs.

Data Structures, Algorithms, and Invariants is an ideal textbook for data structure and algorithms courses in information science, data science, and programming.

Robin Hillyard is an associate teaching professor in the College of Engineering at Northeastern University. He has been a software innovator, developer, manager, and architect over a long career, having written his first program in 1968. Dr. Hillyard holds an undergraduate degree in engineering science from University College, Oxford, with a specialization in control engineering, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on sorting algorithms, genetic algorithms, anonymization, cryptography, and blockchain.