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Problem Solving with Data Structures Using Java: A Multimedia Approach
- By Mark J. Guzdial, Barbara Ericson
- Published Jan 5, 2010 by Pearson.
Book
- Sorry, this book is no longer in print.
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)
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.
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