Data Structures for Coding Interviews

Description Coding interviews are essentially problem-solving. You are given a problem, either directly or in the form of a story as given on the online platforms like hackerrank.com, Google CodeJam, etc. and you are expected to provide the optimal solution of the problem and code it in your choice of programming language.Each chapter in this book focus on one data structure. It first introduce the concepts and theory related to the data structure, followed by interview questions based on that data structure.Sometimes, the usage of a given data structure is not intuitive in solving a particular problem, but as we will see, there are templates that can be used to identify if a data structure is good for a particular problem.Strategy to master data structure for problem solving is much like strategy used for mathematics, which is:Understand the theorems and concepts (Understand each data structure separately).Solving simple problems on those concepts (Write simple programs using that data structure).Even if you know the concept and have practiced simple problems, you may not be fit to crack the IIT entrance exam. For that you have to solve (and keep solving) difficult problems. (Now code difficult problems).Remember, while solving difficult problems, we are usually not learning new theorems (same for data structure), but when we see a pattern, we try to create our own rule and note down the pattern. In Data Structures you will find many problems following the same pattern of solution. Make notes of such patterns.