Laboratory exercises for practical performance of algorithms and data structures

This paper addresses the question of theoretical versus practical performance of algorithms and data structures. It describes an experiment the first author has been using in his data structures course to achieve the primary objective of comparing theoretical behavior of algorithms with their actual performance. It also presents enhancements in performance evaluation experiments and a general methodology that can be used to develop experiments in senior or first-year graduate courses in data structures, algorithm analysis, software engineering, and operating systems.