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Look around and you will see ways that people organize things. When you stopped at the store
this morning, you went to the back of a line to wait for the cashier. The line organized people
chronologically. The first person in the line was the first to be served and to leave the line.
Eventually, you reached the front of the line and left the store with a bag containing your purchases.
The items in the bag were in no particular order, and some of them were the same.
Do you see a stack of books or a pile of papers on your desk? It’s easy to look at or remove
the top item of the stack or to add a new item to the top of the stack. The items in a stack also are
organized chronologically, with the item added most recently on top and the item added first on
the bottom.
At your desk, you see your to-do list. Each entry in the list has a position that might or might
not be important to you. You may have written them either as you thought of them, in their order of
importance, or in alphabetical order. You decide the order; the list simply provides places for your
entries.
Your dictionary is an alphabetical list of words and their definitions. You search for a word and
get its definition. If your dictionary is printed, the alphabetical organization helps you to locate a
word quickly. If your dictionary is computerized, its alphabetical organization is hidden, but it still
speeds the search.
Speaking of your computer, you have organized your files into folders, or directories. Each
folder contains several other folders or files. This type of organization is hierarchical. If you drew a
picture of it, you would get something like a family tree or a chart of a company’s internal departments.
These data organizations are similar and are called trees.
Finally, notice the road map that you are using to plan your weekend trip. The diagram of roads
and towns shows you how to get from one place to another. Often, several ways are possible. One
way might be shorter, another faster. The road map has an organization known as a graph. |