Linear Structures

Before dealing with the complexities of branched structures, the data scientist should have a firm grasp of the simpler linear structures. Linear structures are fundamental data collections in data science and they accommodate the processing of sequences of data. Linear structures have connected elements with each element having one leader and one follower, with exceptions for the first and last elements. The term connection is synonymous with linking, as in linked lists . Linear structures include arrays, lists, stacks, queues, random access lists , and sorted lists . Lists and arrays are commonly used in programming languages as the basis of other structures, including stacks and queues.