[samwho]

I actually read that post on the alias method just the other day and was blown away. I think I’d like to try making a post on it. Wouldn’t be able to add anything that link hasn’t already said, but I think I can make it more accessible.

[eru]

I have a few more topics we could cooperate on, if you are interested.

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/62d0d742-3316-421b-9a7b-d... has a 'very static' visualisation of sorting algorithms. Basically, we have a 2d plane, and we colour a pixel (x, y) black iff the sorting algorithm compares x with y when it runs. It's a resurrection (with AI) of an older project I was coding up manually at https://github.com/matthiasgoergens/static-sorting-visualisa...

I'm also working on making https://cs.stackexchange.com/q/56643/50292 with its answer https://cs.stackexchange.com/a/171695/50292 more accessible. It's a little algorithmic problem I've been working on: 'simulate' a heap in O(n) time. I'm also developing a new, really simple implementation of soft heaps. And on my write-up for the solution to https://github.com/matthiasgoergens/TwoTimePad/blob/master/d...

> I actually read that post on the alias method just the other day and was blown away. I think I’d like to try making a post on it. Wouldn’t be able to add anything that link hasn’t already said, but I think I can make it more accessible.

If memory serves right, they don't do much about how you can efficiently support changes to your discrete probability distribution.

[samwho]

I appreciate the offer (and your contributions in the comments here!) but collaborations are very difficult for me atm. Most of the work I do on these posts I do when I can steal time away from other aspects of my life, which can sometimes take weeks. I wouldn’t be a dependable collaboration partner.

[eru]

No worries.

I'd mostly just appreciate a beta tester / beta reader.

[samwho]

Totally happy to do that! You’ll find where to contact me on my homepage. :)

[smusamashah]

I made a tool to visualize sorting algos https://xosh.org/VisualizingSorts/sorting.html where you can put your own algo too if you like.

[ncruces]

I love the idea behind that sorting visualization, and found it extremely useful to validate the properties of my Quicksort implementation.

https://github.com/ncruces/sort

[eru]

That's interesting. Alas, it only works for in-place sorting algorithms (and it's also an animation).

[tmoertel]

A while ago I tried to create a more self-explanatory implementation:

https://github.com/tmoertel/practice/blob/master/libraries%2...

It is limited to integer weights only to make it easy to verify that the algorithm implements the requested distribution exactly. (See the test file in the same directory.)

[eru]

You could probably restrict to rational numbers, and still verify? Languages like Python, Haskell, Rust etc have good support for arbitrary length rational numbers.

Each floating point number is also a rational number, and thus you could then restrict again to floating point afterwards.