April 2011
Beginner
624 pages
11h 34m
English
Much of the power of computers stems from their ability to work on arbitrarily large amounts of data—arbitrary in this case meaning “any number of times you like.”
An array is an arbitrarily large collection of data indexed by number. With a few keystrokes you can create array data structures of any size. Then, by using loops, you can process the data structure efficiently, often with just a few lines of code. Loops and arrays go hand in hand. Together, they help make programs not just powerful but useful.
Suppose you’re writing a program to analyze scores given by five judges in an Olympic kite-flying contest. You need to store all five values for a while so you can measure statistical properties: ...
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