MC27L Lab 1.5: Timing Card Sorting (Spring 1997)

For this lab, you will do the card-sorting experiment described in section 4.1 of the book. Be sure to read through the beginning of this section before coming to lab, in particular the sidebars on pages 94-96 describing the two sorting algorithms. You will not have to hand in a lab report, but we ask that you attend anyway, since we will discuss the results of the experiment in class.

For the timing of the sorts, you should use stopwatch program on the SGIs, which you can find using the ``Find An Icon'' panel, the same way as finding SchematiX is described in Lab 0. Again, the lab instructor will be able to help you with finding and using the program.

When you are done sorting 4, 8, 16, and 32 cards using each of the two sorting algorithms, bring your times to the lab instructor for incorporation in the class-wide graph. If you run out of time time without getting all eight timings done, don't worry about it--depending on how many false starts you have until you get the hang of the two sorting algorithms, and how speedy you are with the cards, you might not get all eight done, but you'll no doubt still get the main point of the exercise.


Course labs web site: http://www.gac.edu/~max/courses/S97/MC27L/
One lab instructor: Karl Knight <karl@gac.edu>
The other lab instructor: Max Hailperin <max@gac.edu>