Learner Reviews & Feedback for Data Structures by University of California San Diego

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The course covered important data structures and gave an insight on how to counter challenging algorithmic problem through step by step analysis from a very simple approach through slowly and steadily approaching towards better performing algorithms .This gradual rise from a learner's perspective is priceless and helps in better proficiency of the topic.Week 1 taught us basic data structures such as arrays,linked list,stacks and queues and there applications while solving problems on network processing through representing the packets in the form of queues , proper parenthesization of algebraic expressions through an application of stack and representation of tree upside down which we see everywhere in computer science as well as finding the height of a n-ary tree.Week 2 represented very common data structure used in almost any production system's source code the Array List and its time analysis through a new method called amortized time which was analyzed through banker's method,physicist method and the aggregate method .Week 3 described some pretty fast data structures whose mere usage can increase performance considerably such as priority queues whose representation are binary heaps and have special characteristics of Sifting up and Sifting down to maintain the classic heap property and it introduces a very fast sorting algorithm called heap sort.And this was not it another data structure was introduced which is called the disjoint set ( Union find) which made finding paths in very large graphical systems just a formality.The best part of this data structure remained integral to the characteristic of the course to find the efficient solution gradually but definitely as it showed which finding the union find function first through representing as arrays and assigning the parents as indexes and slowly finding the problem in arrays to go through tree representation as a necessity not just because every one has done it.Then came the fourth week and a learner's performance seeking mindset was in full throttle whether it be hash tables,hash functions or distributed hash tables used by Google Drive, Yandex Disk or Drop box there was no way stopping it and thus whole week showed how much can be achieved through hash table representation of data on which these companies integral technologies are based on.On a personal note I also saw the representation of distributed hash tables in Akamai's cloud distributed networks.The week 5 dig deeper into Binary Search Trees and there representation as well as there height were subject to scrutiny with the several applications such as AVL trees as well as Splay Trees all showed certain characteristics of height balancing which are very useful in caching and thus were considered as assignment to have a look and feel of big classes and using methods such as merge and split to get fast retrieval.Thus performance oriented mind set was explored to the fullest through playing of these data structure and applying them on real life scenarios.

A really great course, you should definitely take this second after Algorithmic Toolbox, as that has an easier learning curve for the very 'CS professor' style code (lots of single letter variables and other quirks) and how projects should be submitted and tested.

That said, there is a lot of good learning in this course. Make sure you have some good Algorithms textbooks to accompany the lectures, they have recommendations in the course. I personally use Sedgewick's book and CLRS which aren't exactly what they suggest, but work well. Take your time with the learning, make sure you really understand the concepts before moving on to the homework. Use multiple sources to learn (they provide plenty of links!) and you'll do well.

In response to a very politely asked request for clarity: I rated this 4/5 rather than 5/5 stars as I found that for my preferred language (Python) some of the starter files were very poorly created. This meant I often have to rewrite the initial parsing of the inputs because it would create variables that contained incorrect or incomplete input data. Further, there were some non-harmful quirks like semi-colons or parameters shadowing Python reserved words in the code. The next course in this series, Algorithms on Graphs, did not seem to have any of these issues, though!

A really good course. I'd have to say the beginning lectures went pretty darn fast. If I hadn't had previous exposure to data structures, I'm sure I would have felt totally buried. As it is it served as a great refresher for the basics, and then the more advanced concepts later were well-presented and thoroughly analyzed. I have a good feel for the use and running times of the operations discussed. I felt bad that I didn't do all the programming exercises when only like 2 or 3 were needed to pass. They were pretty challenging, and by the time I had done enough to pass I was like, OK moving on....maybe I'll circle back to the ones I didn't get to.

Interesting topics, great assignments except for last one. Was too hard yes (I like this), but the test response is not always clear. If there is an overflow I should read "overflow" but sometimes, as your manual says, overflow could show "wrong answer". And this is not fair, as when the problem is hard we need to understand if the answer is wrong or it causes overflow. You could say this enforces students to think and think and think until they solve it. I've used 2 week for the entire course and 2 weeks for the last one exercise.... this is a bit stressful.

The final module with the Splay tree is way too difficult when compared to the rest of the material in the course. This course would be better structured with three assignments as follows: 1) tree order problem, 2) a simpler tree assignment that only deals with a basic binary search tree, 3) the set range sum problem implementing the splay tree, as an advanced problem. Aside from the difficulty of the last module, this is a great course. It's very comprehensive and you'll take away lots of useful information on course completion.

This course was well planned and the lectures were very good. I feel like I learned a lot from the course. Most of the programming assignments were good and helpful for learning, but I found 1 of the hash table assignments and 2 of the binary search trees assignments to be very difficult and time consuming. I would prefer the assignments to be doable in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe the really difficult assignments could be marked as optional. I also think the time estimates for doing the assignments are way too low.

A great interest generating course that gives us both an insight as well as an opportunity to explore the vast field of algorithms and data structures. I recommend to anyone that wants to start in this field as well as to those that are well-versed in this field as it will definitely teach you something new (if not new than a different perspective to looking at the same problem will definitely be provided) :).

Kudos, cheers and all the luck to my fellow learners, our teachers and to the students yet to undertake this course,

Excellent course in general, and I learned a lot of new data structures that one doesn't generally learn about in standard algorithms and data structures courses, like disjoint sets and splay trees.

Only complaint is that sometimes the problems are too complicated for how easy they are. By this I mean that the problem statement is very long and elaborate, when what they are really asking is something trivial that can be programmed in a few lines, but it takes a while to understand just what they are asking.

Great course! I figured disjoint sets was pretty interesting - the rest of the material I get by with no issues, but boy: the BST advanced assignments (splay trees) in week 6 is by far the hardest assignments I tried in both Algorithmic Toolbox and Data Structures. It's a pretty big jump in difficulty (I don't think they explained splay trees in the lectures very well; it was pretty fast), but I was so ecstatic when I solved it that I didn't mind.

This course is very hard for non-STEM major student, even non CS-major student. Some concepts are very abstract to explain. The course team generally did a good job at explaining concept, but it would be better if they can offer more examples, animations, illustrations, sample code and explanations, etc. to help students understand these concepts. A rewarding course overall. Best if you are going to have a code interview.

This course was considerably harder than the first one. Content is top quality but slides lack detail and lectures some times don't do a good job explaining things well enough given the difficulty of some of the things they ask in the exercises. Still, I learned a lot of programming doing the exercises and I would still recommend it. If you're new to algorithms you will have to supplement using online resources + books.

The last two weeks felt rushed. The Binary Search Tree/AVL Tree module doesn't have a quiz or an assignment and it's easy to move on without fully understanding both data structures. This allows for wasting time on the last assignment which relies on understanding AVL trees. I recommend reading the external resources for each lesson and making sure you have a grasp of the data structure before moving to the next module.

This is a great course which gives you the basic understanding required in handling data structures along with some state of the art techniques and applications for those structures. Had a little difficulty in following binary search trees because of the pace of the course and lacking detailed explanation at places. But overall it is a really good course to get up to speed on some of the most used Data Structures.

The course is overall really good. I learned a lot about data structures and got experience applying them for various problems. The majority of the lecturers were also good and they explained the topics in a clear and precise manner. However, the lecturer for week 5 and week 6 didn't explain the topics that he covered very clearly in my opinion. Overall I had a really good experience during the course.

Really good course. I learned a lot and enjoyed the instruction style as well as the way the exercises and assignments were graded.

I would've given the course 5 stars were it not for the final assignment which was made very difficult not so much by the content but by the code sample we were meant to extend... It was full of global state and mutation, very hard to follow and frustrating to work with.

I​ have rated four stars for the course to be easily understandable for the basics, however it doesn't help much if you want to get into an advanced level, the instructors keep passing the advanced topics and cramming it after just giving a general idea.. In general, the course is good but the programming assignments are badly explained, if you get the explanation of the assignment it can be done

This is a very good course. The only thing I had problems with was the way the tests were set up - they were giving me no information about why my code was failing. I understand the reasoning behind not releasing test cases in failing tests, but like me - a lot of people keep submitting and failing, and in the end getting discouraged . Suggesting modification of test case outputs in the future.

I loved that I had a lot of really tough but relevant problems to code and solve. I only wish the presenters were more visual. With so many splitting, inserting, merging and deleting, I was hoping for some animation on the slides in the video rather than the presenters simply waving their hands. The books for supplemental reading were really helpful along with watching the videos. a few times

First weeks are awesome, it is a great course if you want understand very well some structures like heaps or union/find. I just think the last week is too fast and concise, I would like some additional work about trees and for many users could be a problem, otherwise will be a 5 stars without any doubt, though for me this course worked very well.