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Sorting Algorithms — Boring Until You Add Sound
An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who's ever taken a programming course or tried to learn how to code out of a book will have come across sorting algorithms. Bubble, heap, merge — there's a long list of methods for sorting data. The subject matter is fairly dry. Thankfully, someone has found a way to not only make sorting more interesting, but easier to remember and understand, too."
Ditto MS BASIC 7(?) on the old 1985 Amiga - included demos with sound.
Plus TV shows, especially scifi ones, do this all the time. The computers don't have to make noise but the audio engineer added the sound to keep the show from being dull.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The heap sort actually has intermediate structure. If you watch carefully you can see that it has two phases, the first much shorter than the second. However, the structure isn't as visibly obvious as for merge sort.
If it had showed quicksort (I can't understand why it didn't) then you'd have seen some intermediate structure there too.
I also noticed that the selection sort wasn't as good as it could be. It's more efficient to select the largest and the smallest unsorted values on each pass - you halve the number of passes, and on each pass you do 50% more work, so overall it's a 25% improvement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHF_5RIxTE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O50M24pSmTs