Re: sorting student papers

John H Palmieri wrote:

A silly question for a rainy Monday:

I am teaching a class with roughly 50 students in it. They have
quizzes and homework each week, and I end up alphabetizing these
papers before I return them to the students. Some of you may be in
similar situations. My question: what technique should I use to sort
the papers? (Or maybe: what techniques do you use to sort papers in
situations like this?)

Notice that I'm not talking about writing computer code to implement
Quick Sort or something like that -- I'm talking about shuffling
actual pieces of paper around. I also have good information about the
keys on which I'm sorting: I can see how they are distributed through
the alphabet, for example, so if I want to divide them into two
roughly equal stacks, I can make a good guess about how to do that.



I first sort into two groups, A-M and N-Z. Then I sort the former into two groups, A-F and G-M. Then I sort A-F into six groups, and sort each of those by insertion. Similarly for the rest of the tree.

--
Stephen J. Herschkorn sjherschko@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Math Tutor on the Internet and in Central New Jersey adn Manhattan
.

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  • sorting student papers
    ... A silly question for a rainy Monday: ... I am teaching a class with roughly 50 students in it. ... papers before I return them to the students. ... what technique should I use to sort ...
    (sci.math)