Central European folk-dancers illustrated sorting algorithms

Robbo sez, "Sapientia University has posted a series of videos using folk dances as a way to visualy demonstrate various sorting algorithms. It's intensely geeky - and just downright cute too."

I love sorting algorithms -- I actually use bubble-sorts in real life all the time when I'm trying to make subtle qualitative distinctions (picking the best three flowers out of a bunch, say).

Take one Central European folk dancing team, a small folk band and an added overlay showing array locations and get them to dance the algorithms in time to "appropriate" folk music. The result is slightly surreal and for a time at least slightly hypnotic.

Sorting algorithms as dances (Thanks, Robbo!)

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burritoflats

If I remember correctly, they used to do this sort of special dance on “The Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s – except while wearing Mouse ears. I appreciate this dance but still have no idea what a bubble-sort or an algorithim is.
- SamSam
  
  An algorithm is a systematic way of doing something, and in this case it’s a way of sorting the dancers from lowest number to highest. Did you notice any pattern to how the dancers started out with their numbers all out of order, and ended up all sorted in order?
  
  Anyway, what I particularly liked was that they didn’t skip anything. They still had dancers compare against each other even when the two were already in order, and they had to compare part-way up the chain at the end, even though they were already all in order. A programmer must have had the last word there, to say that “no, even though we can see that it’s all sorted, the algorithm still doesn’t know!”
daen

Goodness. It’d be fun to see a bunch of algorithms done this way – linked list element addition and deletion, red-black trees, heck even one of Knuth’s pseudorandom generators … Choreocryptography even?
- paulj
  
  Markov chain interpretive dance? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8
catgrin

I have this strange urge to watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
- Chanfan
  
  Huh. I have this strange urge to watch Seven Brides modulo Seven Brothers, myself.
dragonfrog

Merge sort seems like one of the most danceable sorting algorithms – it’s a natural for a square dance.
Anonymous

They wanted to show you the heap sort algo as well, but it’s only available pay-per-view on Cinemax :)
sam1148

That’s wonderful. The thought that went into it and the choreography of the dancers. For the dancers, keeping up with the numbers and cues would be very difficult.

I Appreciate it.and I’m glad it’s on the net for viewing.
Marktech

Yes, it was impressive, but I was hoping they’d finish by summarizing Proust in fifteen seconds and performing the dead parrot sketch.
Birko

That’s a brilliant teaching concept. Doing it in binary would need a fleet of amulances though, and I wonder if The AlgoRythms play Zorba the Geek?

Kudos to the creators!
RangerGordon

There was a bit of cognitive dissonance for me, because I always felt for some reason that odd numbers are male and even numbers are female, instead of the other way around.

But it’s a beautifully done piece! Loved it.
RSFSmee

One wonders how much better American pupils would perform on examinations of mathematics if performing accurate dances of algorithms — sorting and otherwise — was a routinely-offered teaching methodology.
- SamSam
  
  Unfortunately, high school mathematics in the United States spends far too much time on completely pointless things like the chain rule in calculus, which no body will ever remember or care about unless they have a need for it, to learn anything useful like a sorting algorithm.
hdon

Sesame Street 3030
Anonymous

O(n^2)
That is all. :)
Avi Solomon

They have interesting similarities to Gurdjieff’s “Movements” which were based on mathematical symbolism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7430376162567485658
- NoctilucentStudios
  
  Interestingly I was thinking the exact same thing the second before I read your comment.
Anonymous

But where’s the Czechsum?
- daen
  
  But where’s the Czechsum?
  
  Awful. Truly awful. I think I love you.
  - Cardinal Biggles
    
    He must have Moldova that pun for quite a while …