The IDEA team has interpreted the quicksort algorithm in a set of illustrations in the style of the IKEA self-assembly furniture instructions. 

The Quicksort algorithm is a combination of very efficient, elegant, and notoriously prone to coding errors because of its subtlety, and because it is often incorrectly explained. Invented by British computer scientist Tony Hoare in 1959 and published in 1961, Quicksort relies on an initial choice of a pivot element in an array, splitting the array into two sub-arrays that contain the elements that are smaller and larger than the pivot. The sub-arrays are then sorted recursively until everything is sorted. 

The KVICK SÖRT instructions have been developed by the creators of IDEA, a website that aims to make algorithms more understandable in a nonverbal way. The name IDEA is a pun on the name IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer. IKEA originated in Sweden and is well known for its pictorial instructions for the company's self-assembly furniture. 

IDEA has diagrammatic instructions for public key cryptography, binary search, balance trees, graph algorithms, and a number of sorting techniques including merge sort, bogo (stupid) sort, and quicksort. The website is the creation of Sandor Fekete of the Institute of Operating Systems and Computer Networks Algorithms Group at the Technical University of Braunschweig, and blinry, who is based in Hamburg. All the instructions are available under Creative Commons licenses, so everyone is free to share and adapt them in noncommercial settings. The developers hope they will be useful in all sorts of contexts, for teachers, students, and curious people alike.  

The KVICK SÖRT explanation is very clear and understandable. It starts with the random choosing of the initial split point:

Then goes through the stages of identifying which elements need to move:

Before going on to show the two parts of the partially sorted list being passed back into Quicksort.  

In addition to the graphical explanations, the website has some merchandise including mugs, t-shirts and posters - ideal for people trying to get ahead with their present buying for the festive season!

And for an encore, merge sort, courtesy of IDEA:

More Information

IDEA website

Blinry Website

Sándor Fekete's Webpage

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