[Edu-sig] Analyzing algorithms...

[Jeffrey Elkner]

After attending Pai Chou's wonderful presentation, "Algorithm Education
in Python" at Python10, I got permission from the instructor of an
algorithms course I am currently taking to do our programming
assignments in Python (after first assuring him that they would not be
difficult to read ;-)

Our first assignment is to implement merge and heap sort and then to
compare them empirically as to the number of assignments and comparisons
made by each.

I've written the sorts.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best
way to do the empirical analysis?  Is there a better way than just
creating counters and then littering my code with increment statements?

Please let me know if you have any ideas?

Thanks!

jeff elkner
yorktown high school
arlington, va