Institute of Theoretical Informatics, Algorithmics

Visualization of Graph Algorithms

Project Members

Summary

Algorithms for graphs can often be comprehended in a rather pretty and descriptive way; their illustration, for example on the blackboard, however, frequently raises problems. For this reason we developed a tool (“AlgoVis3D”), which is capable of visualizing graph algorithms, which are implemented in Java, in three dimensions. We already employed this tool on two occasions: First, it was part of a contribution to the “Algorithm of the Week”, an initiative of the Fakultätentag Informatik, which is primarily aimed at pupils, and second, it was the basis for the practical training course “Algorithm Engineering”, where students implemented and visualized algorithms themselves. We thereby attach great importance to the simplicity of augmenting the actual code of the algorithm by the lines necessary for visualization. Furthermore we achieved an “Honorable Mention (shared 1st place)” in this years “Freestyle Contest” of the international conference “Graph Drawing 2006”. We plan to employ our tool mainly in teaching in the future.

Software

The Framework AlgoVis3D is available under the license “CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported”.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License