One Minute Evaluations for 14-16 October

CS 305 - Computer Algorithms I

• Topic: Indirection.

  Question: How can indirection be used for [?].

  One minute response: I can't make out the question.

• Topic: We learned about dealing with pointers in functions and memory, implementation.

• Topic: Talked about ADTs.

  Question: Should we be using STL functions in our programming assignments.

  One minute response: No.

• Topic: Difference between ordered and unordered lists, optimizing unordered lists.

  Question: No questions.

• Topic: We went from something (something being rosters) that would lead us to linked lists; linked lists are awesome.

  Question: When will we realize that computers were made so we could be God?

  One minute response: As long as computers have to be programmed by humans, we'll remain crawling around in the mud.

• Topic: We talked about memory addresses, arrays, and ordering arrays.

  Question: If we pass a pointer into a function, should we delete that pointer after it comes back or in the function.

  One minute response: It depends. In general, the rule is "you allocate it, you delete it." This rule is most frequently violated in the other direction; when the function allocates some storage and passes the pointer to the caller, who then has the responsibility of deleting it.

• Topic: This week we learned about how to implement our roster ADT.

  Question: No questions at this time.

• Topic: Pointers, linked lists.

• Topic: Pointers and sorting stuff.

  Question: Talk about how dynamic memory works on the physical level.

  One minute response: That will probably take us far afield, and it varies widely from system to system.

• Topic: How to manipulate rosters into more efficient ADTs.

  Question: If memory must remain ordered, will new insertions into the free section of roster need to check for size? Will the new stuff fit in the old hole?

  One minute response: Order doesn't enter into it; an new entry always has to check for available free space.

• Topic: Dynamic data structures and pointers.

• Topic: Rosters, vectors, locality, repetition, lists.

• Topic: Talked about expense of unordered arrays of adding and finding elements and how to improve on that. Intro to pointers (intro to linked lists).

• Topic: Using a roster that we made up of two arrays (storage, next).

  Question: Can I see an example of implementation.

  One minute response: See Section 8.4 of the text for an implementation of array-based linked lists.

• Topic: We talked about sorted and unsorted structures and memory models.

• Topic: We discussed our roster data structure and how to optimize it. We ultimately derived an array-based linked list to do this.

  Question: Is there any way to predict all [?] non-contiguous memory locations?

  One minute response: In general, no. An individual chunk of memory is contiguous, but successively allocated chunks of memory may or may not form a larger contiguous block.

• Topic: We talked about lists and pointers.

  Question: What other common errors are made with pointers?

  One minute response: The most common error made with pointers is to use them in the first place.

• Topic: This week we talked about unordered arrays and how to optimize them, as well as memory models, and storage.

  Question: Would it be efficient to delete a move to the front array each time you search something new?

  One minute response: Not really, because you'd lose all your other data, and the recent history of accesses.

This page last modified on 16 July 2003.