The Divide and Conquer Sorting Activity

Have the class act out being calls to a merge sort algorithm.
You start with a shuffled pile of cards with numbers. Creating clones of yourself from students you pass out piles of cards to two others, who each pass half their cards to two more clones they make behind them. This continues till there is a row of people each holding one card only. The cards are then passed back the way they came in a way that means when the cards are passed back to you, magically they are no longer random but now in sorted order.

Learn about:

  • sort algorithms
  • divide and conquer
  • mergesort
  • quicksort
  • efficiency of algorithms
  • computational thinking

Resources

This session comes with slides and simple props, a linked activity sheet  that you can download is in preparation:

This activity works well on its own but can naturally be used with the Bubblesort Activity

Back to activities

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