Assignment 1: Development of an Inventory Management System for a Tool Library

Please make sure to answer all fields on the cover page.

Question 1

Remember to detail all steps and provide adequate justification.

Question 2

Remember to detail all steps and provide adequate justification.

Question 3

For this question, our focus is not on coming up with complex mathematical formulas, but you need to provide a clear reflection with sufficient details.

Question 4

Paste put your source code in the appendix, and provide here your justification, results, and discussion.

Question 5

Remember that you do not need to repeat questions 1-3 in detail for a linked list, but you need to discuss what would change in your approach if using a linked list, and the impact on efficiency (if any).

Assignment details

For this assignment, we assume the only information you have about these customers is names, so we treat the collection as a collection of strings. This is not completely realistic of course, but it does not impact the behaviour or efficiency of any of the algorithms, which is what the unit is about. For simplicity, we will also assume that all names are unique.

In the first instance, you are considering using an array to store the customers. For now, we assume that you have already allocated the array to a maximum sizeN_max, which you hope will be large enough to accommodate all your customers.

You are evaluating two options:

Option A: You always insert customers at the end, not caring about the order.

Option B: You always keep your structure sorted, by inserting any new customer at their correct position.

This leads you to consider the following algorithms:

Option A

Assignment questions

Your evaluation of the algorithms is conducted by addressing the following questions. Each question should be addressed in theIFQ564 Assignment 1 template (DOCX 39 KB)Download IFQ564 Assignment 1 template (DOCX 39 KB).

For all questions, the focus is not so much on giving the correct answer as it is about being able to critically think about the answer. Of course, the ideal submission would have both a correct answer and a suitable reflection, but a partial answer incorporating good critical thinking will score better than a correct answer seemingly obtained by chance.

This is reflected in the marking structure for all questions, and it is particularly important if you choose the AI-assisted approach. How you obtained your answer and how you assessed that it was suitable is more important than the answer itself. That reflection is crucial to assess that you are meeting the learning outcomes of the unit.

Question 1

Separately for each algorithm in option A, discuss their efficiency. Make sure to follow the steps covered in the models and detail your thinking:

1.

1. What is the problem size?
2. What is the basic operation?
3. Does the algorithm have a best case and a worst case?
4. Calculate the exact efficiency function, using a summation formula or recurrence relation as appropriate and show all steps in the calculation. If the best and worst cases are different, calculate both functions.
5. What is the efficiency class? (or classes, if the best and worst cases are different).

Question 2

Same question, for the algorithms in Option B.

Question 3

Which option do you think is best? How much does that depend on the relative number of insertions, deletions, and searches?

Question 4

Implement both options in the programming language of your choice, and run suitable tests to achieve two goals:

1. Ensuring that the algorithms are working as expected.
2. Verifying whether the execution time matches your efficiency analysis from Q.13.

Make sure to justify the tests you are running and to clearly show and discuss your results.

Question 5

You realise that the number of customers may get quite large and that it is quite difficult to estimate it. You decide to use a linked list instead of an array.

Without going through the first three questions again in detail, discuss what would change in your approach if using a linked list, and what the impact on efficiency would be.

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