Recommendation

Has Potential

Link

http://www.cs.hope.edu/~dershem/ccaa/animator/Animator.html

Delivery Method

Java Applet

License

Unavailable

Language

English

Author

Peter Brummund

Institution

Hope College

Project

Animator

RelationshipToProject

PartOfCollection

Works

Yes

Description

Traditional swapping-bars animation with user-selectable colors, number of blocks, a few data set choices, speed control, and AlgorithmSimulation-type readouts for number of swaps and number of compares. Also has bounce-along Java code.

Evaluation

This is an OK visualization if all you need is an animation. May not do an adequate job explaining how the algorithms work. Strength: This implementation has a very helpful and somewhat unusual feature: It shows what subset of the array is currently being worked on by means of hierarchical bars at the top. Weakness: The merge implementation is horrible. It attempts to avoid using an auxiliary array. Instead, it uses an inner loop that gives this algorithm an O(n^2) worse case performance. Has some screen update bugs. Garish colors.

ActivityLevel

Animation; Random Data

GoodFor

Lecture Aid; Teaching the Concept

Screenshots

Videos

References

HowToUse

First Visited

2006-11-07

Last Visited

2009-05-04

Last Updated

1997

Topic

MergeSort

Community

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