Sorting practical

[valentineap]

Ready for review.

Fun way to spend a Saturday. The 'animation' is a 30Mb file, which is not ideal. However I didn't find a way to make it smaller... if someone fancies trying, they are most welcome!

Python script to generate it is also in the directory (obvs. to be deleted when the students get it).

https://github.com/valentineap/ComputationalGeoscienceCourse/tree/master/Practicals/Exercise%20N%20-%20Sorting%20algorithms

[valentineap]

N.B. part of the issue with the animation is that it's embedded as an HTML widget to avoid having to deal with video codecs to display mp4...

[charlesll]

The sorting algorithms are good and interesting to implement. However, I have doubts concerning the animation... I had a hard time doing my first one in Python, and was not a newcomer...

What I could suggest is:

• give the code of the Gnome sort
• give also the code to animate the Gnome sort thing

Ask to do the same for the three other algorithms and create the global animation.

I think the students will need starting example to understand the sorting algo and the animation part...

What do you think?

I can write the examples if you'd like.

[valentineap]

I was intending that there would be an earlier exercise that walked them through how to make an animation. Also that this would be one of the last exercises in the list, as it is quite hard

With this in mind, do you still think some changes are necessary?

[charlesll]

Well, if they know how to do an animation, I guess this is OK.
However, I think it still may be good to provide the function for the first sorting algorithm, to get them started.
Maybe @oscarbranson has some thoughts about that that could help decide?