Recommendation

Has Potential

Link

http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/dsrkg/cs210/applets/minSpTree/MST.html

Delivery Method

Java Applet

License

Unavailable

Language

English

Author

R. K. Ghosh

Institution

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Project

Ghosh's Collection

RelationshipToProject

PartOfCollection

Works

Yes

Description

A panel on top of the applet displays several controls to build a graph and to progress through the algorithm. The visualization allows the user to construct her own input graph by adding nodes and weighted edges in addition to providing a default graph. Next, the user selects the algorithm (Kruskal's or Prim's) to use. The user can step through the algorithm or begin a continuous animation that runs to completion from the current step. The visualization uses a a color scheme to distinguish between the various logical entities in the algorithm.

Evaluation

This visualization does a reasonable job at explaining the construction of the MST. The color scheme used is satisfactory. A good default example is provided. The visualization illustrates the algorithm at the right granularity. The presentation and usability of the applet could be improved. The vertical dimension of the applet is too large and forces the user to constantly scroll to the "display pane" and back to the "control pane". The control pane is crowded with several buttons. A compact way to express these controls is highly desirable. The point at which an edge is added to the MST in the Prim's algorithm is not intuitive. Supporting explanation text would significantly enhance the visualization. The user cannot control the speed of the animation portion at each step. This is a problem because it is too slow, and at the same time, the explanation messages are getting overwritten before the user can process them completely.

ActivityLevel

Step Control; Animation; User Data; Canned Data

GoodFor

Teaching the Concept

Screenshots

Videos

References

HowToUse

First Visited

2008-06-04

Last Visited

2008-07-15

Last Updated

2001-08-21

Topic

MinimumCostSpanningTree

Community

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