Arrays are data structures that store a collection of data elements of the same type using a single variable name to represent the entire collection. Structures group together data of different types under one name. Sparse matrices represent matrices with many zero elements by only storing the non-zero elements, using triples of row, column, and value to represent each non-zero term. Transposing a sparse matrix involves taking each non-zero term <i,j,value> and storing it as <j,i,value> in the transpose.