<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Apr 11, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Scott David Daniels wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">One idea I had some time ago is using Python for visualizations.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In particular, I once built an iterator-based visualization of DB</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">query processing (based on old collaborative work with my erstwhile</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">office-mate Bennet Vance) that makes it visually obvious that query</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">processing re-arrangements produce dramatically different query</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">processing speeds.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>It was a Tkinter-based thing, and if enough CS</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">teachers (let's say, two) are interested, I'll go dredge up the code</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">(which involves dissecting a dead laptop) and prep it for reading.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The delay should be a week or so.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">love that idea, and I would be happy to help as I'm going to start talking about query processing in a week or so.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I really like using algorithm visualizations for data structures class. I think it really helps the students get at the main ideas in the the algorithms. I made some additions to Guido's program sortvisu.py that comes with the Tkinter demos in the python distro for my data structures class this Spring. sortvisu.py is a nice program for the student to use to see visually how the different sorting algorithms compare.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The version that comes with the distribution was missing shell sort and merge sort so I added those two. Maybe more interesting that the sort functions themselves was the nice array class that made it easy to add new algorithms, and would probably be useful for more than just sorting algorithms. If people are interested I would be happy to post my new version of sortvisu.py.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">One of my colleagues here at Luther also made a nice little Tkinter program for creating graphs and then visualizing some graph algorithms.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Brad</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--Scott David Daniels</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:Scott.Daniels@Acm.Org">Scott.Daniels@Acm.Org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Edu-sig mailing list</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:Edu-sig@python.org">Edu-sig@python.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig">http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig</A></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Bitstream Vera Sans; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; ">Brad Miller, PhD</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; ">Assistant Professor</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; ">Luther College</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; "><A href="http://www.cs.luther.edu/~bmiller">http://www.cs.luther.edu/~bmiller</A></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; ">jabber:</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; "> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Lucida Grande; "><A href="mailto:bnmnetp@jabber.org">bnmnetp@jabber.org</A></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>