Final Remarks

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the “Elegant by Design” module.

Summary#

In this module, we learned how to leverage the power of dissecting a problem in detail to figure out the least expensive operations required to solve it. With the Sliding Window pattern, we gained practice in various techniques that ensure that a solution, which seems to require nested loops, actually executes in linear time. Using the Union Find pattern, we learned to solve a diverse set of problems using the disjoint-set data structure.

Additional resources#

If you’re looking for more challenges to solve using the patterns in this module, you can hone your skills on these problems:

Takeaways#

• We learned how to use efficient linear traversal techniques for problems featuring linked lists and arrays.

• We familiarized ourselves with the algorithms and problem-solving techniques closely tied to basic data structures such as linked lists, stacks, and matrices.

• We got hands-on experience with the two basic tree traversal techniques to solve problems featuring hierarchical data.

• We learned how to use hash maps and other techniques to track the key features of a problem that were needed to solve it efficiently.

• We developed the skills to recognize problems whose solution requires exhaustive search and got hands-on experience with using the backtracking pattern to develop such solutions.

• We learned how to track the key features of a problem in order to solve it efficiently.

• We explored how to use heaps to efficiently track the top K elements in a stream, to use two heaps to speed up complex algorithms, and to merge sorted data from multiple sources.

• We got hands-on experience with manipulating and analyzing time interval data for scheduling and resource allocation.

• We acquired the skills needed to optimize solutions by storing and reusing recurring subproblems where the problem was composed of nested subproblems.

• We gained hands-on experience with using graphs and tries to implement optimal solutions to problems from various domains.

• We got hands-on experience with designing and implementing our own custom data structures to solve specific problems that cannot be handled using standard data structures.

• We got hands-on experience with using topological sort to solve hard problems that feature partial order in the input data.

• We acquired the analysis and problem-solving skills needed to use the Sliding Window pattern to improve the efficiency of solutions.

• We learned how to use the Union Find pattern to efficiently solve hard problems where the connections between input elements are significant.

• We practiced and improved our ability to analyze the time and space complexity of algorithms and learned to use it as an objective measure to compare multiple solutions to the same problem.