From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Teaching sorts [was Re: What's the best language to start with?] Date: 1996/08/27 Message-ID: <4vtto9$77n@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 176697115 references: <31FBC584.4188@ivic.qc.ca> <01bb83f5$923391e0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4uah1k$b2o@solutions.solon.com> <01bb853b$ca4c8e00$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4udb2o$7io@solutions.solon.com> <4uvi6j$1brg@watnews1.watson.ibm.com> <321886DA.15FB7483@escmail.orl.mmc.com> <4vjtaa$6bq@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada nntp-posting-user: ok Date: 1996-08-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >Richard said >"There is another factor: heap sort requires moving one's attention from >card [i] to card [i/2]; this is a very expensive operation for people". >Oh gosh no!!! >Arrange the cards in a heap layed (sic) out as a binary tree, nothing else >makes sense if you are using heap sort on cards. Remember that the >[i] to [i/2] business is just a trick for mapping the underlying binary >tree! A very fair point, which I must concede. It does, however, support my contention, which is that the costs for people may differ from the costs for computers, and different spatial layouts of the cards may very large difference to human costs, thus making manual card sorting a rather poor way to gain intuition about *computer* costs. Animations such as those on the Cormen Leiserson & Rivest CD may perhaps be a better way to go. -- Australian citizen since 14 August 1996. *Now* I can vote the xxxs out! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.