Resources for Learning Sorts

Sometimes one just doesn’t know what blog posts are going to take off. Last month I wrote a post called Sorting Isn’t Always Simple. It’s been by far the most read post of the last month or longer. Given that a lot of AP CS teachers are working on teaching sorting this month that probable shouldn’t be a surprise I guess. After posting that I started seeing a bunch of sort resources on my twitter feed and on other blogs. I thought maybe I should gather a bunch of them in one place for future reference. Some of these sites have other visualizations than just sorting BTW. So here we go.

 Algo-rythmics - Technologically and artistically enhanced multi-sensory computer science education (Inter-cultural method for teaching-learning sorting algorithms) Most famous for their visualizations of sort algorithms though dance they have a bunch of stuff on their site these days.

The Java Applets center by the University of Canterbury in New Zealand has a lot of visualization applets that include a number of sorting algorithms. But there is much more so check it out.

Sorting Algorithm Visualizations by David Martin. 8 different sorting algorithms on 4 different initial conditions. Really helpful for showing how algorithms work on different data.

Data Structure Visualizations by David Galles at the University of San Francisco. This is another site that has a lot more than just sorting by the way.

What different sorting algorithms sound like A YouTube video that combines visual representation of sort algorithms with sound.

Using a deck of cards to show merge sort Mike Zamansky talks about a hands on way he uses to demonstrate a merge sort.

Sorting Algorithms from CS Unplugged This page includes even more links to other sorting resources than I have here. It doesn’t seem right to copy and paste there work here and slide down to Other Resources.