Welcome to the first module of Data Structures and Algorithms! Here we will provide an overview of where algorithms and data structures are used (hint: everywhere) and walk you through a few sample programming challenges. The programming challenges represent an important (and often the most difficult!) part of this specialization because the only way to fully understand an algorithm is to implement it. Writing correct and efficient programs is hard; please don’t be surprised if they don’t work as you planned—our first programs did not work either! We will help you on your journey through the specialization by showing how to implement your first programming challenges. We will also introduce testing techniques that will help increase your chances of passing assignments on your first attempt. In case your program does not work as intended, we will show how to fix it, even if you don’t yet know which test your implementation is failing on.