Sorted!
March 19, 2016 3:35 PM   Subscribe

"SORTING is an attempt to visualize and help to understand how some of the most famous sorting algorithms work. This project provides two standpoints to look at algorithms, one is more artistic.. the other is more analytical aiming at explaining algorithm step by step."
posted by urbanwhaleshark (17 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
Welp, I love this. I wish this was around back when I was in comp sci.
posted by jeffehobbs at 3:49 PM on March 19, 2016


It would have been nice if they'd added double-storage variants for mergesort and heapsort, they both really benefit from the extra space.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 3:50 PM on March 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


Bah, why use pretentious motion graphics and include a lot of pointless one (but not the ones used in modern production code) when you can use central-european folk dances.
posted by effbot at 4:00 PM on March 19, 2016 [22 favorites]


I've actually been kicking around doing a FPP with the Eastern European folk dancing ones. I am probably not your average computer science student, but the folk dancers totally made this make sense to me.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:12 PM on March 19, 2016


15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 Minutes is my favorite party music.
posted by endotoxin at 4:40 PM on March 19, 2016 [9 favorites]


It's good, but it's no Sorting Out Sorting.
posted by Mayor West at 4:57 PM on March 19, 2016 [6 favorites]


Even knowing how these algorithms work, the visualization is not especially informative. Shouldn't the animation for heapsort illustrate, you know, the heap? Also echoing Proofs and Refutations that the O(n log n) mergesort with extra space is the interesting one; what's even the point of showing a O(n^2) mergesort.
posted by Pyry at 5:39 PM on March 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also missing: bogosort.
posted by Pyry at 5:42 PM on March 19, 2016 [3 favorites]


Very cool. As a software developer who doesn't have a computer science background, I find this particularly interesting. Thanks!
posted by defenestration at 5:54 PM on March 19, 2016


It’s good, but it's no Sorting Out Sorting.

Classic! Thanks, Film Board of Canada!
posted by Going To Maine at 6:48 PM on March 19, 2016


I watched that 15 sorting algorithms thing twice when it was posted to Reddit. Really calming. By the time I was done with the second run through I had three people gathered behind me also watching.
posted by nevercalm at 7:36 PM on March 19, 2016


Related: AlgoRythmics, a YouTube channel which presents sorting algorithms as traditional European dances. (extra recommended: quick-sort)
posted by Cozybee at 9:25 PM on March 19, 2016


It's nicely implemented, but IMHO the animated GIFs on the Wikipedia articles for these algorithms are already more than adequate. Personally, I've never found visualisation aids to be particularly useful for understanding algorithms (that aren't already visual in nature, like graphic algorithms), because I can usually only make sense of what I'm seeing in the visualisation once I already understand the algorithm on a conceptual level. Different people learn differently though.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 4:47 AM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


@Pyry: Even knowing how these algorithms work, the visualization is not especially informative. Shouldn't the animation for heapsort illustrate, you know, the heap?

Totally agree, I don't see how these would aid you to get either a basic understanding or deeper understanding of the algorithms. Same is true of quick-sort: me saying "you choose one element of the list as a pivot, and then divide the list into elements that are larger and smaller than the pivot, then recurse" would give you a much deeper understanding of the algorithm than watching an animation like this (it might seem difficult to parse at first, but at least that explains what's happening, rather than showing what appears to be a bunch of random swaps).

Illustrations of algorithms can be enormously helpful, but illustrating the bare bones of what's happening at the bottom instead of the higher-order concepts is not the best way to go about it. As you said, if you wanna explain heap-sort, draw the heap.
posted by gkhan at 1:32 PM on March 20, 2016


The folk dance ones were much more intelligible to me than the animations in the main post. Perhaps because they moved more slowly, or because the ones being compared to each other stepped out of the line. From now on when I think about sorting, I will always picture the elements bowing to each other in acknowledgment before they take their places.
posted by not that girl at 3:25 PM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I liked that the URL was sorting.at

As in - "You're a wizard, 'arry."
posted by Sparx at 8:43 PM on March 20, 2016


Bubble Sorting Hat:
TAKE ONE STEP TOWARD GRYFFINDOR. I'LL BE BACK IN A MINUTE.
posted by schmod at 5:25 AM on March 21, 2016


« Older A Farewell to the Dog Who Helped Him Off the...   |   “Truly no, I am not Elena Ferrante,” Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments