What is an Algorithm?

How do you make your tea?

• You boil the water;
• You put fragrant tea grains into the tea kettle;
• You pour water into the tea kettle;
• You wait until the tea drink is ready;
• You pour the tea into the cup.

After these steps, you drink the tea. All these steps together are called an algorithm. In computer programming, an algorithm is almost the same. These tea-preparing steps are defined instructions to solve a particular problem.

Why do we need to know algorithms?

As algorithms are used across a wide variety of applications today, studying them can provide you with more insight into how they function, and how they can improve the efficiency of the programs you already use.

Why do we need to know data structures?

Data structure provides a way of organizing, managing, and storing data efficiently. With the help of data structure, the data items can be traversed easily. Data structure provides efficiency, reusability and abstraction.

The first part of the course is more theoretical. In this course, we will study data structures. We will practice in the second part of the course when we study algorithms.