InfoVis Interaction Techniques in Animation of Recursive Programs

Abstract: Algorithm animations typically assist in educational tasks aimed simply at achieving understanding. Potentially, animations could assist in higher levels of cognition, such as the analysis level, but they usually fail in providing this support because they are not flexible or comprehensive enough. In particular, animations of recursion provided by educational systems hardly support the analysis of recursive algorithms. Here we show how to provide full support to the analysis of recursive algorithms. From a technical point of view, animations are enriched with interaction techniques inspired by the information visualization (InfoVis) field. Interaction tasks are presented in seven categories, and deal with both static visualizations and dynamic animations. All of these features are implemented in the SRec system, and visualizations generated by SRec are used to illustrate the article.