CIT 216          CIT 216                                   FUNDAMENTALS OF  DATA STRUCTURES 
                  
                  
                    COURSE 
                      GUIDE 
                  
                  
                  
                 CIT 216 
                 FUNDAMENTALS OF DATA STRUCTURES 
                  
                  
                  
                 Dr. Vivian Nwaocha (Course Developer/Writer) - NOUN 
                 Dr. S. Reju (Programme Leader) - NOUN                    
                 Dr. Vivian Nwaocha (Course Developer/Writer) - NOUN 
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA 
                  
                  
                  
                  
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                   CIT 216          CIT 216                                   FUNDAMENTALS OF  DATA STRUCTURES 
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  
                 © 2022 by NOUN Press  
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                 First Printed 2009 
                 Revised and Reprinted 2022 
                  
                   ISBN: 978-058-031-X 
                  All Rights Reserved
                  
                  
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                 CIT 216                                               FUNDAMENTALS OF  DATA STRUCTURES 
                    
                    
                    
                                 CONTENTS                                                                           PAGE 
                    
                                 Introduction………………………………………………………  1 
                                 What this Course Will Help You Do………………….…………                                   1 
                                 Course Aims……………………………………..……………….  1 
                                 Course Objectives…………………………..…………………….  1 
                                 Working through this Course…………………….………………                                      2 
                                 Course Materials………………………………………..………..                                          2 
                                 Online Materials…………………………………………………                                             2 
                                 Equipment………………………………………………….…….  2 
                                 Study Units ………………………………………………………  3 
                                 Assessment………………………………………………….……  5 
                                 Course Overview………………………………………………...                                            5 
                                 How to Get the Most from this Course……………………..…….                               5 
                                 Facilitators/Tutors and Tutorials…………………………………                                  6 
                                 Summary………………………………………………….………  7 
                                 Introduction                                                                   
                    
                                 The  course,  Data  Structures,  is  a  foundational  course  for  students 
                                 studying towards acquiring the Bachelor of Science in Communication 
                                 Technology  degree.  In  this  course,  we  will  study  programming 
                                 techniques  including  data  structures  and  basic  algorithms  for 
                                 manipulating them. 
                    
                                 The overall aims of this course are to introduce you to programming 
                                 concepts as and algorithm techniques. Topics related to data structures 
                                 and storage management are equally discussed. 
                    
                                 The bottom-up approach is adopted in structuring this course. We start 
                                 with the basic building blocks of object-oriented programming concepts 
                                 and  move  on  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  data  structures  and 
                                 algorithms. 
                    
                                 What this Course Will Help You Do 
                    
                    
                                 The overall aims and objectives of this course provide guidance on what 
                                 you should be achieving in the course of your studies. Each unit also has 
                                 its  own  unit  objectives  which  state  specifically  what  you  should  be 
                                 achieving  in  the  corresponding  unit.  To  evaluate  your  progress 
                                 continuously, you are expected to refer to the overall course aims and 
                                 objectives  as  well  as  the  corresponding  unit  objectives  upon  the 
                                 completion of each. 
                    
                                 Course Aims 
                    
                                 The overall aims and objectives of this course include:
                    
                    
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                 CIT 216                                               FUNDAMENTALS OF  DATA STRUCTURES 
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                              Develop your knowledge and understanding of the underlying 
                            principles of foundational data structures. 
                              Build   up   your   capacity   to   evaluate   different   algorithm 
                            techniques. 
                              Develop your competence in analysing data structures. 
                              Build  up  your  capacity  to  write  programmes  for  developing 
                            simple applications. 
                    
                    Course Objectives 
                    
                    Upon completion of the course, you should be able to: 
                    
                    
                          Describe  the  basic  operations  on  stacks,  lists  and  queue  data 
                        structures. 
                          Explain the notions of trees, hashing and binary search trees. 
                          Identify the basic concepts of object-oriented programming. 
                          Develop java programmes for simple applications. 
                          Discuss the underlying principles of basic data types: lists, stacks 
                        and queues. 
                          Describe  structures  and  algorithms  for  external  storage:  external 
                        sorting, external search trees. 
                          Identify directed and undirected graphs. 
                          Discuss sorting: internal and external sort. 
                          Describe  the  efficiency  of  algorithms,  recursion  and  recursive 
                        programmes. 
                          Discuss the algorithm design techniques: greedy algorithms, divide- 
                        and-conquer algorithms, dynamic programming. 
                    
                    Working through this Course 
                    
                    We designed  this  course  in  a  systematic  way,  so  you  need  to  work 
                    through it from Module one, Unit 1 through to Module 6, Unit 6. This 
                    will enable you appreciate the course better. 
                    
                    
                    Course Materials 
                    
                    Basically,  we  made  use  of  textbooks  and  online  materials.  You  are 
                    expected  to  search  for  more  literature  and  web  references  for  further 
                    understanding. Each unit has references and web references that were 
                    used to develop them. 
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
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