Recommendation

Has Potential

Link

http://nova.umuc.edu/~jarc/idsv

Delivery Method

Java Applet

License

By Request

Language

English

Author

Duane J. Jarc

Institution

University of Maryland University College

Project

IDSV

RelationshipToProject

PartOfProject

Works

Yes

Description

This AV represents some important properties of undirected graphs with animations. Through visualization, it identifies and illustrates several fundamental properties of Graph such as whether the graph is connected, whether it contains cycles, and whether the graph includes an undirected tree. The AV also provides textual feedbacks about graph properties for a given graph. To visualize the concept of the graph connection, the AV simply shows two nodes that do not have any path between them by depicting circles the nodes in blue and white. One blue circled node is randomly selected and any node that is not connected to that blue node is represented by the white circled node if it exists. Regarding the graph cycle, it first identifies any sequence of edges that forms a cycle, and then those cycled edge represented with white color. It also provides “I’ll try” mode in which users can identify by themselves the graph connection, cycles, and tree form.

Evaluation

This is a fairly simple algorithm visualization for categorizing graphs. I could see some benefits for this AV. With simple features, this visualization could be somewhat fulfills its purpose of giving the users ideas of fundamental properties of undirected graph. It seems that textual feedback particularly helps users understand the fundamental concepts of the three different graphs. the best feature of this AV is the “I’ll Try” mode. I think that this feature makes users more engaged, and induce some pedagogical activities through prediction exercises. Textual feedbacks about whether user’s answer is correct would be helpful for understanding of graph properties. However, it would have more facilitated user’s learning if its textual feedback contained more information about each steps of the algorithm. Giving users a choice for either using stepwise control or continuous animation is a fairly nice option for visualization. However, there are some rooms for improvement. Although its simple visualization less distract users who is learning about the basic concepts of graph categorizing, its visualization is too simple to raise students’ awareness. Also, users are likely to benefit from several good or particular graph examples. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the randomly generated examples are not useful. If users want to see specific characteristics of undirected graph, they should repeatedly generate new graph until finding proper one. It would have been beneficial if users could specify their own graphs by clicking on the drawing region. This AV can be used either as part of a lecture by instructor in order to explain the concepts of undirected graph properties or individually by student.

ActivityLevel

Random Data; Predictions

GoodFor

Lecture Aid; Self Study; Lab Exercise

Screenshots

Videos

References

HowToUse

First Visited

2008-04-24

Last Visited

2008-07-15

Last Updated

2005-12-03

Topic

GraphRepresentations

Community

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