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11.1 EXPANDING THE ALGORYTHMICS COLLECTION 121
11.1.4 Feedback
In Subchapter 7.1.1, we presented early (2011-13) evidences of the impact
of the initial dance choreography collection (first six videos). In the following,
we list some recent YouTuber comments (from the 2014-2020 period) for all ten
videos. The first comment after we had uploaded our new videos in 2018 was:
“Wow 6 years later this channel revived from their ashes!”
Most of the users who commented on the videos were CS students. They
generally appreciated that the visualizations helped them understand and memo¬
rize the algorithms: “This helped me finally understand quick sort”; “Explained,
without explanation, a lot of questions I had”; “I can no longer forget quick
sort”; “I always go back to these videos when I need a refresh of sorting algos,
they are so much easier to understand and remember than textbooks”. Some
of the comments are about the students thanking us for helping them through
the exam: “Thank you amigos, you saved my day, I passed my exam”; “Estos
videos son geniales, me salvaron en un examen de programaciön”. Many users
expressed regret that they did not learn the algorithms at school/university with
these visualizations: “This is so much better than hours of lecture in my univer¬
sity”; “I wish my teacher explained sorting like this instead of being so boring”;
“This is much clearer than any material I have ever encountered”; “I’ve never
enjoyed studying for finals more. I wish my teacher had used this in class”; “If
my teacher had shown these videos, the class would have been clearer”; etc.
On the other hand, there were non-CS majors too who expressed their
appreciation: “Not a computer science major, don’t even know a thing about
computers, but I watch a lot of those mesmerizing sorting videos. This is by far
the best suggested video I’ve ever received”. One student wrote that even his
parents understood the visualizations: “First time I found any sort of explana¬
tion for a sorting program that was simple enough for my egghead parents to
understand”. Others showed their children the videos: “Cool way to show kids”.
We were particularly happy whenever we received comments from CS teach¬
ers: “I show every semester to my Data Structures & Algorithms students. It makes
it SO much easier to talk about how it works”; “What a great implementation of an
algorithm! I don’t even have to say anything to my students and they understand
the algorithm”; “This is a fun way to watch it. I programmed ‘Sorting Out Sorting’
(30 minute movie - you can find it on YouTube) in 1979-81 (early days of computer
graphics) and only really understood Quicksort after I saw what I’d programmed
in graphic format (looks very similar to this - no Hungarian dancers however)”.
The majority of the comments are about the general impression of the users
(“This Is One of the best things ever created by humans”), but there are a few that
appreciate the solution we have chosen to visualize the algorithm. For example:
“(Heap-sort) So this can be elaborated as Dance battle to get the top position in
a tree only to give it to the lowest candidate in a hierarchic and settle out side