Data Structures in Real Life: Where You Meet Them Every Day

Topic: Y2 Real-life applications of data structures

Where data structures are used in everyday technology and Ghanaian life, explained step by step: browser history, music playlists, undo buttons, print queues, search engines, social media and maps; dining-hall menus, bank queues, school charts, bus routes, student IDs and phone contacts.

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What's inside

You may never have written a linked list or a stack, but you use them many times a day. Every time you press "Back" in a browser, skip to the next song, press "Undo", or wait for a printer, a data structure is quietly at work. This note connects each data structure to the real systems it powers, so the ideas stop being abstract.

SUMMARIZED NOTES

Year 1: Applications of arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees and graphs in computing and everyday technology.
Year 2: Real-life examples of arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, graphs, hash tables and maps in Ghanaian settings.

Year 1: Data structures in computing

Arrays

Arrays store lists of related items under one name, such as test scores or names in a register, so a program can search and sort them quickly. Two-dimensional arrays store tables: the colour of every pixel in a photo is stored in a 2D array, and image-editing programs change pictures by changing those values.

Linked lists

Linked lists shine wherever items need "previous" and "next" links:

Web browser: the back and forward buttons move along a list of pages you visited.
Music player: each song links to the previous and next song in the playlist.
GPS navigation: a route is stored as a list of locations, each leading to the next.
They are also used to build other structures, such as stacks, queues, trees and graphs.

Stacks

Stacks are perfect whenever the most recent thing should come back first:

Undo and redo in a word processor: each change is pushed onto a stack, and Undo pops the most recent one.
Reversing a list: push items in, pop them out, and they come back in reverse order.
Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculators, which take two numbers then an operator.
Tracking where a program must return after a function finishes.

Queues

Queues are used wherever fairness and order matter:

Printer queues: print jobs are printed in the order they were sent.
Operating systems queue programs waiting for CPU time.
Traffic management at airports and on roads.
Network protocols such as TCP queue packets so they are delivered in order.
The fetch–decode–execute cycle: instructions fetched first are decoded and executed first.

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