Problem Solving with Data Structures Using Java: A Multimedia Approach: International Edition

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.

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

About the Author :
<>Barbara Ericson is a research scientist and the Director of Computing Outreach for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She has been working on improving introductory computing education for over 5 years. She enjoys the diversity of the types of problems she has worked on over the years in computing including computer graphics, artificial intelligence, medicine, and object-oriented programming.   Mark Guzdial is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.  An award-winning teacher and active researcher in computing education, he holds a joint Ph.D. In Education and Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Dr. Guzdial directs Project “Georgia Computes!” which is an NSF funded alliance to improve computing education from pre-teen years to undergraduates.  He is a member of the ACM Education Board and is a frequent contributor to the ACM SIGCSE (Computer Science Education) Symposium.   Barbara Ericson and Mark Guzdial, are recipients of the 2010 Karl V. Karlstom Outstanding Educator Award for their contributions to broadening participation in computing. They created the Media Computation (MediaComp) approach, which motivates students to write programs that manipulate and create digital media, such as pictures, sounds, and videos. Now in use in nearly 200 schools around the world, this contextualized approach to introductory Computer Science attracts students not motivated by classical algorithmic problems addressed in traditional computer science education. They also lead “Georgia Computes!” an NSF-funded statewide alliance to increase the number and diversity of students in computing education across all of Georgia.  Barbara Ericson directs the Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech. Mark Guzdial is director of the Contextualized Support for Learning at Georgia Tech.  Together they have written three textbooks using the MediaComp approach to engage and inspire student learning in computing. The Karlstrom Award recognizes educators who advanced new teaching methodologies; effected new curriculum development in Computer Science and Engineering; or contributed to ACM’s educational mission.

Review :
“An innovative departure from the typical presentation of this content; it uses a multimedia context to highly engage students. This is a refreshing applied/practical presentation than the more common abstract one.” — Tom Wulf, University of Cincinnati College of Applied Science “This textbook [Guzdial/Ericson] may be a way to introduce computer science students to data structures without losing them as majors!” — Helen Hu, Westminster College “The applications are just so darn interesting!” — Kathy Liszka, University of Akron “Overall, I think the examples and applications are more interesting and relevant than other CS2 textbooks that I have seen before.” — Timothy Huang, Middlebury College “This text [Guzdial/Ericson] explores data structures using the context of pictures, sounds, music, animations, and simulations. It provides rich context for learning about the structuring of data using Java.” — Charles Fowler, Gainesville State College “Other data structures books are generally boring. Guzdial/Ericson uses media computation successfully in introductory programming courses in both Java and Python. Students can see the usefulness and relevancy of programming to manipulating digital media.” — Kam Fui Lau, Armstrong Atlantic State University