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From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: ALGORITHMS ANYBODY?
Keywords: but i digress
Message-ID: <1990Aug26.180343.14653@newcastle.ac.uk>
Date: 26 Aug 90 18:03:43 GMT
References: <90Aug22.090345edt.9450@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1990Aug23.153652.23949@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <12872@june.cs.washington.edu> <1990Aug24.183639.15361@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
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Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU.
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In article <1990Aug24.183639.15361@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> tpmg0848@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Magliery) writes:
>
>I find it useful to teach insertion and selection sort together, rather than
>to emphasize one or the other.

I do this too, in my formal methods course; and then optimize one up
to merge sort, and the other up to quick sort.  It fools the students
into thinking we've got a complete taxonomy for sorting algorithms :-).

>                                                 ...  But (I don't think
>anybody has mentioned this either) bubble takes *less code*.  This may not
>seem very important to us (I'm not sure how important I consider it), but it
>is often important to the students, so it's something to keep in mind.

It's important if it means someone can understand it all at once, as
opposed to understanding parts of it.  However, when I'm concerned with
proofs of correctness, bubble sort doesn't win at all, since you
have to go operational, and functional proofs are so much easier.

>Enough.

Yea, verily.
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 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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"The meanest flower..can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for words."