Reaction for: Do Algorithm Animations Assist Learning? by Saul

Because it is late and I am really behind, I will keep this brief. I believe that these animations ARE the best way to understand the algorithms that we deal with for sorting, searching, and other things that (as Amanda has noted) go on in cs16. The graphical simulations like Balsa, Tango, or even the cs16 visualizer are made to help those students who can not easily visualize the data structures they represent. Sometimes, this does them a disservice because they feel that a heap MUST be written in tree format for example. Visualization for me was the best way to understand how an algorithm would work. To hand simulate something, one would do exactly what Balsa does - go step by step through an algorithm to see how each step would work.

I am a big fan of work like this becasue I have difficulty "seeing" how some things relate and work in data structures or other algorithms. How could I possibly code an AVL or a Red Black Tree without seeing what I was doing. It is possible, but visual representations allow students to go farther and attack more difficult problems.


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