Course: Programming 102: Think Like a Computer Scientist

In this step, we’re going to compare linear and binary search, and see how well they perform on a variety of sorted lists when searching for specific items. Just as …

We’ve seen how linear search can be made a bit more efficient if you know you are searching a sorted list. In this step, we’ll look at a much more …

In Week 2 we noted that there can be different algorithms for solving the same problem and that some alternative algorithms achieve the same result. One important factor in choosing …

In this step you’re going to implement your own basic version of linear search, and then write a more efficient algorithm that is optimised to work on sorted lists. The …

Linear search is a simple search algorithm to understand and to implement. It just involves checking each item in a list in order (hence “linear”) to see if it’s the …

Whenever we have lots of items, it’s important to be able to find the one we need. Examples of searching in everyday life include: Looking through a clothing rail to …

Hopefully you saw in the last section that bubble sort is a pretty inefficient algorithm. In almost every case, merge sort will sort a list much quicker than bubble sort. …

Now let’s look at another sorting algorithm, one that is a little bit more efficient than bubble sort. The merge sort algorithm uses what’s called a divide and conquer strategy, …

Now you’re going to write a bubble sort program in Python. You’ll create a basic implementation to start with, and then try to make a few improvements. Let’s begin by …

There are pleanty of interactive bubble sort demonstrations available on the web. Before you go ahead and program your own bubble sort algorithm, have a look at one of the …

In this step, we’re going to look at a method of sorting lists called bubble sort. The bubble sort algorithm is one of the simplest sorting algorithms to implement. It’s …

Humans like to categorise and order things, to greater or lesser degrees. If you walk into a kitchen, the chances are that you will find there is a drawer set …

Having discussed the algorithm for our counting function, let’s try to implement it in another context. Imagine a class has completed a short online quiz to test their knowledge. Marks …