Explore Computational Concepts With IKEA-Style Charts
If you’re trying to learn about computer algorithms or explain them to someone else, three computer scientists have created some helpful visual aids in the style of IKEA instructions .
Sandor P. Fekete, Sebastian Morr, and Sebastian Stiller have so far created six diagrams explaining public key cryptography , binary search , merge sort , balance trees , graph scanning, and Fleury’s one stroke drawing algorithm . Some explanations are clearer than others, and all are most useful when combined with some of the more traditional explanations. As a layman, I have found the public key and merge sort diagrams to be the most useful, in part because they are the most specific.
Also check out a similar diagram for a packing algorithm that places circles in other shapes, created by Morr for his master’s thesis.