3blue1brownShuffle Islands
Audience:
Tags: combinatoricsprobabilitycomputer-sciencealgorithminteractivepermutationsrandomnessshuffling
This game describes an algorithm for shuffling cards fairly. It’s used in statistics, cryptography and computer games. It has to be implemented carefully because a common mistake produces a shuffle that’s catastrophically biased. It’s worth studying how bad the biased shuffle is, and some mathematical results about it are unexpected. For example, once we have at least 18 cards, the most likely permutation is the identity, where none of the cards change position.
I’ve chosen the format of an Interactive Fiction (“Choose Your Own Adventure”) game rather than an article because I can use games, random events and quizzes, and because you can skip sections if they don’t interest you. Please explore the islands at your own pace and don’t feel required to visit every section.
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Comments
I like the idea of making a choose your own adventure game as an alternative to an article, but I think the design of the options and story are not that exciting; you should expand on the story and the way the concepts are explained.
This is an interesting entry. I liked the story-like approach to explaining this interesting topic, but to be honest, it’s a little bit more “wordy” for my taste. But anyway, good overall. The math explainers are good enough, and most of the time easy to follow.
Very cool idea, but overall way to confusing to be an explainer. Too much dialogue, too few explanations and illustrations.
Content: The pacing of the story was good. The story itself was minimal, which worked well to make the math the focus. The level of detail was perfect as an introduction to the subject as it included precise formulas and diagrams, while remaining focused on just the basics of specific algorithms. This kept the content well within the intended scope of an introduction that is accessible to a high-school-level audience. The brainteasers/puzzles appropriately required comprehension without being obstructive to the audience. I thought it was very effective when you started with the Fisher-Yates algorithm and introduced the concept of factorials as a direct consequence of the sorting logic.
Format/Novelty: A text-based adventure has some obvious pros and cons. It is a creative format for the topic, which has some novelty on its own. It allows the reader to follow the main story and the math at their own pace, and to choose whether or not to engage with the additional content. It was also a good thing that the math was presented in simple examples and explanations, separate from the narrative. The tradeoff with a text-based adventure is that it takes extra attention for the reader to keep track of progress or to solve puzzles. This can be a good thing because it requires active engagement, or a bad thing if the reader’s interest in the information clashes with the demands of the format. I also thought it was appropriate that you included a failsafe for the RNG parts. For such a short story, I never used the save feature. I found myself refreshing the page to return to a previous section instead. I read through every part of the adventure a few times over, but the only engaging part of the story for me was the lizard. I guess text-based RPGs are just not my cup of tea. The way that the reader returns to a “place” in the story to choose what to see next also helps with the navigation issues. There are several alternatives that could improve the mechanics of the story, such as a progress tree that tracks what the user has seen, or some way to return directly to view the content from other parts of the story.
Overall, I thought that the strongest parts were the diagrams + explanations of the algorithms. The format and the story might be weak points for a general audience, but the readers who follow the story will retain the key information.
Enjoyed your story.