CST370 - Module 6

What did I learn in the sixth week of CST370? 

 

This week focused on several data-structuring techniques, beginning with AVL trees and the importance behind maintaining a certain balance. Basically, we needed to understand how to work through LL, RR, LR, and RL cases in identifying correct rotation and there corresponding results, which required a bit of effort on my part as it required me to learn a pattern in applying solutions. Therefore, drawing everything out step-by-step helped me to understand how the rotations work and helped me visualize them accordingly based on the preservation of the AVL trees based on logarithmic height.

The next topic was about 2-3 trees, which was different compared to what we priorly learned, as it allows for multiple nodes to hold multiple keys. Basically, this was an abstract way to split and promote keys based on a set of rules that required me to practice and clarify through the module's materials, allowing me to understand how these trees are done without explicit rotations. The module then shifted into heaps and heapsort, going over max heap prioritizing percolate-up and down operations.

This week eventually concluded with hashing, which introduced a strategy for fast data access through various functions, collision handling, and load-factor management. Working through the examples provided in the materials on the module for this week really helped me understand how to apply everything accordingly. In the end, this week was very dense but educational, as it went over balanced trees, heaps, and hashing, which furthered my understanding on how to essentially choose the most efficient algorithm depending on the given problem constraints.