Advanced Data Structures (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Advanced Data Structures (2017)

courses.csail.mit.edu

149 pointsjonbaer23 comments

This has been on HN a month ago, with some comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044876

And more from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12871234

Also was posted several times with no reaction.

Curious has anyone made use of these advanced data structures in an production program?

I use graphs because we have a case where we need to schedule actions/programs but they themselves have "ingredients" or dependencies in a wild arrangement. So a topological sort of a graph is incredible to solve this and run those actions in order.

I don't think just plain graphs with topological sorting are considered advanced data structures? The're one of the first things you learn in a CS curriculum... whereas lots of the stuff in Demaine's course is stuff that pretty much doesn't even exist in most schools.

Not sure what you consider "production" but suffix arrays et al. are used fairly widely as far as these data structures go, but they aren't particularly exotic. Curious to hear about some more exotic ones though.

Succinct data structures are used in bioinformatics (e.g., in combination with FM-Index).

I mean I suspect we all have through compilers, standard libraries, and database query engines.

Yes. I work on compilers and data structures can make or break the case for implementing several optimizations.

Which ones from that course did you use?

Which one would you point out as the most useful from your point of view? It's much easier to learn that topic looking at the practical side as well as the theory.

Representing integer ranges and working on dynamic graphs are everywhere in compilers. Also hashing and string algorithms, for obvious reasons.

what... hash tables? :) yes

Good stuff, Erik's MIT lectures are a goldmine. He's an excellent teacher of complex topics.

Can't wait until some of these end up in the interview loop /s

If it's particularly rare and advanced, wont using it in interviews filter out a lot of good candidates as well?

Yes, the "/s" at the end meant he was being sarcastic.

Yes, but so do leetcode dynamic programming questions.

So the Fall 2017 class has a concept of inverted lectures where students watch class videos in their own time and essentially have a "office hour" and Q&A type discussion in class.

clicking on those individual icons 'Time Travel' or 'Dynamic Graphs' under Fall 17 returns 404

Why do you tell us, not the author of the web page?

> not the author

What makes you think they didn't?

It seems like the link is just the poster image itself again nothing else. Same as the links in previous terms.

I got the same thing. The actual course info / slides / lectures is here: https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.851/fall17/lectures/

Wish Erick could put them on edx.

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