Video: The fastest sorting algorithm
Radix sort is older than the computer yet quicker than quick sort. Why aren’t we all using it?
We tried out a few new things in this video. There is a live-action scene, so to
speak, where we – well, everyone except me – went to
Technikum29 to film a scene with a punch card
solver from 1958, because it uses radix sort.
This is our second video using Motion Canvas instead of Manim, and also the first video where we used sounds from within Motion Canvas. It was a bit annoying to get working, and we’re seeing some friction coming from the fact that MC is maintained by a single person, and not too actively. Still miles better than Manim though!
Sponsorship
It’s also the first sponsored video! Before this, we resisted sponsorships because Polylog is a side project for all of us and was never meant as a for-profit venture. It also takes some time to organize and you suddenly need to deal with issues like how to divide and tax the money.
We agreed to the sponsorship 80,000 Hours because it’s a non-profit and some of the Polylog members (Vašek Rozhoň, Richard Hladík) were already fans.
Personally, although I don’t align fully with the effective altruism school of thought that 80KH is part of (they’re too optimistic about what they can calculate), I do appreciate the general direction and idea of the organization, so I’m glad that we went with them as our first sponsor.
Title change
The original title of the video was “The hidden beauty of radix sort”, referencing our older The hidden beauty of the A* algorithm video. We kept it for the first three days the video was up, but it didn’t perform too well:
After some discussion, we changed it to the more clickbaity “The fastest sorting algorithm”, and we immediately saw a spike in viewership:
Clickbait wins again.
