<p>This one seems to fit the bill: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_mesh" rel="noreferrer">Navigation Mesh</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-04T22:23:08.100Z
2024-03-04T22:23:08.100Z
Denis
<p>How about <strong>number</strong> ?  A number is a very simple data structure, but it's an important one. You can store a date in one, or a temperature, or a position, ...</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T13:34:40.610Z
2024-03-06T13:34:40.610Z
KesterKester
<p>Neural networks are often considered a computation model, but in effect they store a processed form of the training data, hence I believe it is fair to call them data structures as well.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T07:59:46.373Z
2024-03-05T07:59:46.373Z
Emil Jeřábek
<p>Just found &quot;<strong>Neighborhood grid</strong>&quot;</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Neighborhood grid: A novel data structure for fluids animation with GPU computing.
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Volume 75, 2015.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Combinatorial and Asymptotical Results on the Neighborhood Grid. Skrodzki, Martin &amp; Reitebuch, Ulrich &amp; Polthier, Konrad. (2017).</p>
</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T13:39:40.170Z
2024-03-06T13:39:40.170Z
Marzio De Biasi
<p>Some programming languages have <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html#collections.namedtuple" rel="noreferrer">named tuples</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T10:41:17.940Z
2024-03-05T10:41:17.940Z
Federico Poloni
<p>In particle physics the most common name for the data structure used to store collision data at the Large Hadron Collider is the <strong>ntuple</strong>.  (See, for example, <a href="https://root.cern/doc/master/group__tutorial__ntuple.html" rel="noreferrer">formal docs</a>, or example of  <a href="https://root-forum.cern.ch/t/how-to-search-for-a-value-in-ntuple-and-get-the-index/32095" rel="noreferrer">common usage in random internet post</a> ).</p>
<p>While obviously this name derives from <span class="math-container">$n$</span>-tuple (i.e. tuple of size <span class="math-container">$n$</span>) the structures called <strong>ntuples</strong> by my colleagues (I am a particle physicist myself) contain a lot more than that.</p>
<p>Of course, you could just run with <span class="math-container">$n$</span>-tuple if you didn't want the particle physics baggage/specificity which comes with <strong>ntuple</strong>.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T17:39:08.263Z
Is there much difference from *tuple*?
Barmar
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T17:56:57.370Z
There is not much difference between an $n$-tuple and a tuple.  But a ROOT **ntuple** is closer to a proprietary database format than it is to a tuple because it is usually a list (over collisions) of collision data, each of which is often a list of variable-length-lists (e.g. one collision might contain two electrons and four muons and no jets, while the next event may contain one electron, no muons and 10 jets --- so what is stored for each event in the "electron" list  (e.g. the electron momenta) varies from event to event.  NB - personally I dislike ROOT ntuples, so I'm not promoting them!
KesterKester
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T09:12:59.413Z
2024-03-06T09:12:59.413Z
KesterKester
<p>Try for something nested, e.g.: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_set_collection" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nested Set Collection</a></p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/romanb/JPA-NestedSet" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/romanb/JPA-NestedSet</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T21:20:17.817Z
2024-03-07T21:20:17.817Z
Helena
<p>What about a nibble (semi-archaic for half a byte)? That's either a 4-bit data structure or the sub-structure of a byte.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T17:55:13.927Z
2024-03-06T17:55:13.927Z
derKarl
<p>While on nested data structures, here are some from the programmer's toolbox. Nested interval trees <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1083784.1083793" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nested Intervals Tree in SQL</a>; possible uses in indexing, <a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0402/0402051.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nested Intervals Tree Encoding with continued Fractions</a>. The data structure is best to be looked at like a Nested Set structure. Although a Nested Set is not strictly a data structure, it finds mention in Database docs(Mongo DB, Oracle, etc). For more rigor the Cantor Set comes to mind when looking at Nested Interval Structures. Another data structure from the docs of the Rust programming language, check <a href="https://docs.rs/nclist/latest/nclist/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">nclist, or nested containment list</a> attributed to Alexander V, and ACJ Lee in the Rust docs.
Another data structure- <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-27810-8_20" rel="nofollow noreferrer">non-meldable priority queue</a> for analysis of priority queues. <a href="https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.tau.ac.il%2F%7Ezwick%2FPresentations%2Fmeld-SWAT.ppt&amp;wdOrigin=BROWSELINK" rel="nofollow noreferrer">For more about non meldable priority queues.</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T00:39:31.993Z
2024-03-08T22:20:14.120Z
2024-03-08T22:20:14.120Z
user3483902
<p>A good choice is &quot;Network&quot;.</p>
<p>You might object that a network is a formation, not a data structure, (see <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/network" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;network&quot; in wiktionary</a>) but look:</p>
<p>From the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia entry for Network Theory</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In mathematics, computer science and network science, network theory is a part of graph theory. <strong>It defines networks as graphs</strong> where the nodes or edges possess attributes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(emphasis mine.)</p>
<p>So, a network is also a data structure.</p>
<p>There you go.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-08T07:47:08.550Z
That something is mathematically modelled as graphs does not in any way make it a data structure. Lots of things are modelled by graphs.
Emil Jeřábek
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-08T12:45:55.077Z
@EmilJeřábek you chose to see it as "modelling networks as graphs", but the wikipedia definition says "defines networks as graphs".  Of course I may be wrong, but I think that in network theory, the subject of study is the abstract network itself, not some concrete network instance (TCP/IP, social, etc.) which needs to be modelled before it can be studied.
Mike Nakis
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-08T13:46:27.743Z
Whether you say “models” or “defines” is just word play, it has no bearing on the merit of the issue. A “graph” by itself is not a data structure either. The purpose of a network is to allow passage of information or other commodity from one node to another. Whereas if you claim that network, as a graph, is a data structure, this means you are saying that the purpose of a network is to answer queries revealing certain facts about its network topology. With this twisted logic, *everything* is a data structure.
Emil Jeřábek
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T09:16:03.617Z
2024-03-08T07:30:10.987Z
2024-03-08T07:30:10.987Z
Mike Nakis
<p>How about <strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest_neighbor_search" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nearest neighbor search</a></strong></p>
<p>From Wikipedia</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nearest neighbor search (NNS), as a form of proximity search, is the
optimization problem of finding the point in a given set that is
closest (or most similar) to a given point. Closeness is typically
expressed in terms of a dissimilarity function: the less similar the
objects, the larger the function values.</p>
<p>.......</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or <strong>Nash Table</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>A Nash table is a data structure used in game theory to represent the
payoffs of players in a game. It is named after John Nash, who made
significant contributions to the field of game theory. Nash tables are
typically used in games with multiple players, where each player's
strategy is represented by a row in the table, and each column
represents a possible outcome of the game. The entries in the table
represent the payoffs that each player receives based on the
combination of strategies chosen by all players.</p>
<p>Nash tables are important for analyzing strategic interactions among
players in games and determining optimal strategies. They are often
used in conjunction with concepts such as Nash equilibria to predict
outcomes and make decisions in various competitive scenarios.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or <strong>Natural Join</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>In database theory and relational algebra, a natural join is an
operation that combines two relations based on common attributes,
resulting in a new relation that includes only those tuples that have
matching values in the specified attributes.</p>
<p>When performing a natural join between two relations, duplicate
attributes are removed, and the resulting relation includes only one
copy of each common attribute. The join condition is implicit, based
on the equality of values in the common attributes.</p>
<p>Natural joins are commonly used in database queries to combine
information from different tables based on shared attributes. They
provide a convenient way to merge data without explicitly specifying
join conditions, as long as the attributes to be joined have the same
names and data types in the participating relations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some others are : N-gram ,Name Tree, Network Protocol Stack etc...</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-04-05T12:01:44.343Z
2024-04-05T12:07:22.357Z
2024-04-05T12:07:22.357Z
Death-is-the-real-truth
<p>I’m working on an “ABC” poster of data structures, with one data structure per letter of the alphabet. (It’s intended as decor for a child’s room.) I teach an advanced data structures course and it was easy to fill in almost everything. However, for the life of me I can’t find a data structure that starts with the letter “N.” I’ve checked the NIST DADS database, Wikipedia, Eric Demaine’s Advanced Data Structures course, and my own class and none of them include a data structure that starts with “N.” ChatGPT suggested “node” (not a data structure), “N-ary tree” (a shape of a tree, which isn’t a data structure; compare “binary tree” vs “binary heap”) and “queue” (which doesn’t start with N. &gt;_&lt;)</p>
<p>Apologies if there’s a really obvious answer I’m missing, but is there a data structure whose name begins with “N?”</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-04T21:50:38.223Z
No-Such-Structure?
Emil Jeřábek
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-04T22:20:15.487Z
NFA ? (desperate times...)
Denis
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T00:08:07.463Z
[NoSQL database](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL)?
Neal Young
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T08:28:54.093Z
It's more a type of data structure than a single data structure, but perhaps *non-blocking queue*?
Maged M. Michael, Michael L. Scott: Simple, Fast, and Practical Non-Blocking and Blocking Concurrent Queue Algorithms. PODC 1996: 267-275
Hermann Gruber
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T08:31:39.407Z
several other properties of data structures start with "non-", e.g. non-oblivious etc.
Hermann Gruber
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T09:35:54.517Z
Again, more a family of data structures, but maybe "nearest-neighbour data structures"?
Tassle
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T14:15:19.467Z
Nil (or Null, None) can be considered as the degenerate data structure.
pcpthm
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T14:29:13.487Z
You could also cheat and add the name of the inventor like calling it Nelson's zigzag.
grofte
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T15:26:54.397Z
N is for Nested Data? Sounds like a great bedroom.
Protic
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-05T22:16:38.093Z
Union-find = Non-overlapping subsets?
Jean Abou Samra
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T10:12:05.240Z
NoSQL fits, but isn't really a data structure.  NTFS is arguably one.
John K.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T11:00:18.280Z
@pcpthm your comment has almost as many upvotes as the highest voted answer.  Personally, it is my favorite suggestion so far and I think you should make it into an answer.
Damiano Mazza
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T13:30:38.133Z
Not really "data structures", but borrowing from physics: "Nanostructures" ... and their companions: Nanoflower, Nanohole, Nanomesh, Nanoring, ... :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanostructure
Marzio De Biasi
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-06T18:38:14.297Z
Are you sure this is good decor for a child's room?
Agnishom Chattopadhyay
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T09:19:47.040Z
When you are done making this poster, please post an image of the result.
Mike Nakis
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T11:18:49.163Z
here you go: N For NP-Completeness
Source: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/what-is-np-completeness-in-toc
userbana
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-07T21:48:06.967Z
You probably have very smart children.
Erel Segal-Halevi
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-03-08T00:51:44.783Z
If you want to cheat, put N-ary tree.
Clement C.
<ds.data-structures>
Data structure whose name starts with the letter “N”?
templatetypedef
# Data structure whose name starts with the letter “N”?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-03-04)

I’m working on an “ABC” poster of data structures, with one data structure per letter of the alphabet. (It’s intended as decor for a child’s room.) I teach an advanced data structures course and it was easy to fill in almost everything. However, for the life of me I can’t find a data structure that starts with the letter “N.” I’ve checked the NIST DADS database, Wikipedia, Eric Demaine’s Advanced Data Structures course, and my own class and none of them include a data structure that starts with “N.” ChatGPT suggested “node” (not a data structure), “N-ary tree” (a shape of a tree, which isn’t a data structure; compare “binary tree” vs “binary heap”) and “queue” (which doesn’t start with N. >\_<)

Apologies if there’s a really obvious answer I’m missing, but is there a data structure whose name begins with “N?”

**Tags:** ds.data-structures
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: No-Such-Structure?  
> **username_2**: NFA ? (desperate times...)  
> **username_3**: [NoSQL database](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL)?  
> **username_4**: It's more a type of data structure than a single data structure, but perhaps *non-blocking queue*? Maged M. Michael, Michael L. Scott: Simple, Fast, and Practical Non-Blocking and Blocking Concurrent Queue Algorithms. PODC 1996: 267-275  
> **username_4**: several other properties of data structures start with "non-", e.g. non-oblivious etc.  
> **username_5**: Again, more a family of data structures, but maybe "nearest-neighbour data structures"?  
> **username_6**: Nil (or Null, None) can be considered as the degenerate data structure.  
> **username_7**: You could also cheat and add the name of the inventor like calling it Nelson's zigzag.  
> **username_8**: N is for Nested Data? Sounds like a great bedroom.  
> **username_9**: Union-find = Non-overlapping subsets?  
> **username_10**: NoSQL fits, but isn't really a data structure.  NTFS is arguably one.  
> **username_11**: @pcpthm your comment has almost as many upvotes as the highest voted answer.  Personally, it is my favorite suggestion so far and I think you should make it into an answer.  
> **username_12**: Not really "data structures", but borrowing from physics: "Nanostructures" ... and their companions: Nanoflower, Nanohole, Nanomesh, Nanoring, ... :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanostructure  
> **username_13**: Are you sure this is good decor for a child's room?  
> **username_14**: When you are done making this poster, please post an image of the result.  
> **username_15**: here you go: N For NP-Completeness Source: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/what-is-np-completeness-in-toc  
> **username_16**: You probably have very smart children.  
> **username_17**: If you want to cheat, put N-ary tree.  

---

## 11 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2024-03-04. Score: 14

This one seems to fit the bill: [Navigation Mesh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_mesh)


---

### Answer by username_18 on 2024-03-06. Score: 14

How about **number** ? A number is a very simple data structure, but it's an important one. You can store a date in one, or a temperature, or a position, ...


---

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-03-05. Score: 11

Neural networks are often considered a computation model, but in effect they store a processed form of the training data, hence I believe it is fair to call them data structures as well.


---

### Answer by username_12 on 2024-03-06. Score: 8

Just found "**Neighborhood grid**"

* Neighborhood grid: A novel data structure for fluids animation with GPU computing.
  Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Volume 75, 2015.
* Combinatorial and Asymptotical Results on the Neighborhood Grid. Skrodzki, Martin & Reitebuch, Ulrich & Polthier, Konrad. (2017).


---

### Answer by username_19 on 2024-03-05. Score: 5

Some programming languages have [named tuples](https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html#collections.namedtuple).


---

### Answer by username_18 on 2024-03-06. Score: 5

In particle physics the most common name for the data structure used to store collision data at the Large Hadron Collider is the **ntuple**. (See, for example, [formal docs](https://root.cern/doc/master/group__tutorial__ntuple.html), or example of [common usage in random internet post](https://root-forum.cern.ch/t/how-to-search-for-a-value-in-ntuple-and-get-the-index/32095) ).

While obviously this name derives from $n$-tuple (i.e. tuple of size $n$) the structures called **ntuples** by my colleagues (I am a particle physicist myself) contain a lot more than that.

Of course, you could just run with $n$-tuple if you didn't want the particle physics baggage/specificity which comes with **ntuple**.

> **Comments:**
> **username_20**: Is there much difference from *tuple*?  
> **username_18**: There is not much difference between an $n$-tuple and a tuple.  But a ROOT **ntuple** is closer to a proprietary database format than it is to a tuple because it is usually a list (over collisions) of collision data, each of which is often a list of variable-length-lists (e.g. one collision might contain two electrons and four muons and no jets, while the next event may contain one electron, no muons and 10 jets --- so what is stored for each event in the "electron" list  (e.g. the electron momenta) varies from event to event.  NB - personally I dislike ROOT ntuples, so I'm not promoting them!  

---

### Answer by username_21 on 2024-03-07. Score: 4

Try for something nested, e.g.: [Nested Set Collection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_set_collection)

<https://github.com/romanb/JPA-NestedSet>


---

### Answer by username_22 on 2024-03-06. Score: 2

What about a nibble (semi-archaic for half a byte)? That's either a 4-bit data structure or the sub-structure of a byte.


---

### Answer by username_23 on 2024-03-07. Score: 2

While on nested data structures, here are some from the programmer's toolbox. Nested interval trees [Nested Intervals Tree in SQL](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1083784.1083793); possible uses in indexing, [Nested Intervals Tree Encoding with continued Fractions](https://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0402/0402051.pdf). The data structure is best to be looked at like a Nested Set structure. Although a Nested Set is not strictly a data structure, it finds mention in Database docs(Mongo DB, Oracle, etc). For more rigor the Cantor Set comes to mind when looking at Nested Interval Structures. Another data structure from the docs of the Rust programming language, check [nclist, or nested containment list](https://docs.rs/nclist/latest/nclist/) attributed to Alexander V, and ACJ Lee in the Rust docs.
Another data structure- [non-meldable priority queue](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-27810-8_20) for analysis of priority queues. [For more about non meldable priority queues.](https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cs.tau.ac.il%2F%7Ezwick%2FPresentations%2Fmeld-SWAT.ppt&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK)


---

### Answer by username_14 on 2024-03-07. Score: 0

A good choice is "Network".

You might object that a network is a formation, not a data structure, (see ["network" in wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/network)) but look:

From the [Wikipedia entry for Network Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory):

> In mathematics, computer science and network science, network theory is a part of graph theory. **It defines networks as graphs** where the nodes or edges possess attributes.

(emphasis mine.)

So, a network is also a data structure.

There you go.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: That something is mathematically modelled as graphs does not in any way make it a data structure. Lots of things are modelled by graphs.  
> **username_14**: @EmilJeřábek you chose to see it as "modelling networks as graphs", but the wikipedia definition says "defines networks as graphs".  Of course I may be wrong, but I think that in network theory, the subject of study is the abstract network itself, not some concrete network instance (TCP/IP, social, etc.) which needs to be modelled before it can be studied.  
> **username_1**: Whether you say “models” or “defines” is just word play, it has no bearing on the merit of the issue. A “graph” by itself is not a data structure either. The purpose of a network is to allow passage of information or other commodity from one node to another. Whereas if you claim that network, as a graph, is a data structure, this means you are saying that the purpose of a network is to answer queries revealing certain facts about its network topology. With this twisted logic, *everything* is a data structure.  

---

### Answer by username_24 on 2024-04-05. Score: -2

How about **[Nearest neighbor search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest_neighbor_search)**

From Wikipedia

> Nearest neighbor search (NNS), as a form of proximity search, is the
> optimization problem of finding the point in a given set that is
> closest (or most similar) to a given point. Closeness is typically
> expressed in terms of a dissimilarity function: the less similar the
> objects, the larger the function values.
>
> .......

Or **Nash Table**

> A Nash table is a data structure used in game theory to represent the
> payoffs of players in a game. It is named after John Nash, who made
> significant contributions to the field of game theory. Nash tables are
> typically used in games with multiple players, where each player's
> strategy is represented by a row in the table, and each column
> represents a possible outcome of the game. The entries in the table
> represent the payoffs that each player receives based on the
> combination of strategies chosen by all players.
>
> Nash tables are important for analyzing strategic interactions among
> players in games and determining optimal strategies. They are often
> used in conjunction with concepts such as Nash equilibria to predict
> outcomes and make decisions in various competitive scenarios.

Or **Natural Join**

> In database theory and relational algebra, a natural join is an
> operation that combines two relations based on common attributes,
> resulting in a new relation that includes only those tuples that have
> matching values in the specified attributes.
>
> When performing a natural join between two relations, duplicate
> attributes are removed, and the resulting relation includes only one
> copy of each common attribute. The join condition is implicit, based
> on the equality of values in the common attributes.
>
> Natural joins are commonly used in database queries to combine
> information from different tables based on shared attributes. They
> provide a convenient way to merge data without explicitly specifying
> join conditions, as long as the attributes to be joined have the same
> names and data types in the participating relations.

Some others are : N-gram ,Name Tree, Network Protocol Stack etc...


---

