Friday Fun: The Sound of Sorting

Welcome to 2017. I hope you all had a fantastic time over the Christmas and New Year period.

If you have studied software development or computer programming, I would be surprised if you did not at some stage cover sorting algorithms.

Watching sorting algorithms working is fascinating and soothing at the same time. Adding sound to the visualizations as an “audibilization” just makes it more interesting.

Here is a video from Timo Bingmann that shows the sound of sorting:

15 Sorting Algorithms in 6 minutes (direct link)

The final sort algorithm in the video is a Bogo Sort which is just an awesome sorting algorithm. The basic algorithm is as follows: Check if the list is in order, if not then completely randomize the entire list and check again. As you can imagine this approach is not the fastest method.

If you enjoyed this video check out the playlist of all the algorithms:

• Sorting Algorithms (slower, grouped and ordered)

Tim has a site on the topic and has the software used to create the videos available for download:

• The Sound of Sorting – “Audibilization” and Visualization of Sorting Algorithms

While on the topic of visualizing sorting algorithms, I also found this channel which uses folk dancing to demonstrate various sorting techniques:

• AlgoRythmics

Enjoy

David

This article was originally posted on http://www.winthropdc.com/blog.