An Investigation of Algorithm Visualization

Algorithm visualization, a subfield of computer science research, is the visual representation of an algorithmic procedure or data structure. It often employs multimedia such as videos and animations. It has long been thought by computer science educators that visualizing algorithms and data structures may lead to better knowledge acquisition in computer science education. Several studies have tried to measure the effectiveness of algorithm visualization, and the results have been mixed. However, there appear to be features common among effective algorithm visualizations. Our goals for this project were twofold. First, we sought to synthesize current research by collecting features common among effective algorithm visualizations. Second, we sought to create an algorithm visualization for Professor Mark Liffiton’s MARCO algorithm, employing several of the effective features and technologies we collected. In this work, we present the effective features as well as the algorithm visualization we created for the MARCO algorithm