I've picked this out of the item on animated presentations of sorting algorithms because I think it's right on the money. The static presentations give you real information that the "Gee Whizz!" animations don't.
Much more valuabe - my thanks to the author. You've given me a great tool and much to think about.
I agree - the animations are a cool novelty but these static images give you a lot more information. Kind of an interesting commentary on how you present/visualize data.
These remind me of Doug Hofstadter's "Parquet Deformations" in metamagical themas. Good stuff.
One thing I have always wondered is, how often do you really need to sort something? It always seems to me that the best way to go about getting sorted input is to constrain your inputs in such a way that you will always have a sorted array. Also, how often does one need something to be sorted. Not as much as we talk about sorting algorithms it seems.