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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> Sorting game: would this be fun?
        
(Message started by: amichail on Jan 12^th, 2008, 9:00am)

Title: Sorting game: would this be fun?
Post by amichail on Jan 12^th, 2008, 9:00am

I'm thinking of building a sorting game, set up in a way similar to Numbrosia.

You would be given a horizontal row of dots.

The objective is to sort them into a vertical total order in as few comparisons as you can.

To do this, you pick two dots at a time, which tells you which dot is greater, thus updating the partial order graphically.

Graphically, the partial order would be shown in the standard way:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasse_diagram

Would something like this be fun? Would it be educational? Would it teach people who know nothing about CS something about sorting and algorithms?

Title: Re: Sorting game: would this be fun?
Post by amichail on Jan 12^th, 2008, 9:44pm

This idea has problems:

* it's probably too abstract for the average player
* there's randomness, so you can't replay a level many times to try to improve on your score
* if you have many players, some lucky player might score very well just by luck
* the goal seems arbitrary if you do not understand that this is all about sorting
* drawing hasse diagrams well is difficult

But maybe it might be a good way to introduce students to sorting algorithms.

It might be also better as a two player game, with one player playing the role of the algorithm with the other playing the role of the adversary. But how do you decide who wins?