Floyd's Algorithm

When I had to teacher Floyd’s algorithm for the first time, I found that the available resources made it seem more difficult than it really was. This is because of unclear descriptions within the textbook about how to work simultaneously with both a distance and route tables.

I therefore decided to create this fully animated PowerPoint presentation that clearly shows how the two tables are simultaneousily managed as you work towards the final solution.

The 31 slides are the result of many hours of using PowerPoint’s more advanced features to provide a detailed explanation of the algorithm by working through every step of a typical example question.
(Students will not realise that so many slides are being used “behind the scene”.)

I have also provided extensive teacher notes throughout the slides.

I have made full use of PowerPower’s animation features to bring the algorithm to life. Each decision about updating the distance and route tables is clearly shown, and the updates are done using “fade in”, “fade out” and “motion path” animations.

Once the final distance and route tables are achieved, I dynamically build the optimised routes from the information in the route table.

The presentation could be given to students as a self-paced learning task, or used as the centrepiece of a teacher led lesson.

I have provided a free preview PowerPoint Slideshow so that you can see how clear Floyd’s Algorithm becomes once you make each decision more dynamic, explicitly showing how the distance and route tables are simultaneously updated.

I hope you find this resource very useful. I am happy to act upon any feedback you have as to how I could further improve it.

Regards

Gerard