CS50 for Business - Lecture 2 - Designing Data Structures

The lecture focuses on data structures, exploring how computers store data and how to optimize data storage for algorithm performance. It begins by illustrating computer memory as a grid of addressable bytes, then introduces arrays as the simplest data structure for storing data back-to-back. The lecture then contrasts arrays with linked lists, which offer dynamism but introduce trade-offs in efficiency. Binary search trees are presented as a way to regain the speed of binary search, though at the cost of increased space. Hash tables are explored as a means to achieve constant-time access, and tries are presented as another data structure, offering constant time but potentially wasting space. The lecture concludes by discussing abstract data types like dictionaries, queues, and stacks, and how these can be implemented using different data structures.