Optimization for real-world data.
Morse code is a good one; which leads to the entropy of real-world English
letters: how probable are the letters A, E, and Z? How probable is the
3-gram of letters 'AEZ'? A well-balanced tree could take this knowledge
into account and sparsely add 'nodes' without
I couldn't agree more! Such interactive programmes are often so
much more valuable than hours of talking (even though doing
interactive programmes all the time will wear the students out -- as
always, there is golden middle here ^_^).
Another idea in that direction is to make two or
One of my most memorable classes was Introduction to Algorithms.
Not because I have ever needed to implement a linked list, but because
it opened my eyes to a much larger field of knowledge than just
knowing language syntax.
I went into the class wondering what could I possibly learn? I left
I'm glad Tobias took the bull by the horns and didn't eschew a deeper look
into the sorting algorithms.
As a big fan of animations, my reflex is to scour Youtube for graphical
renderings of the different strategies, but then another thought crops up:
lets get out of our seats and do
Hi Jurgis,
As I had very similar problems in my high school teaching often
enough, let me add my two cents' worth here. In contrast to Wes' and
Kirby's reply, I am focusing much more on the idea of algorithms than
on the software/programming side, and would advocate to give sorting
