ERIK DEMAINE: To me, the key to teaching algorithms well
is just be excited about the material.
I think if you personally think these algorithms are really
cool and like, wow, how did they come up with this,
and wow, I mean, look how this thing interacts with this thing
and magically it all runs super fast,
I think communicating that excitement,
students pick up on it really quickly
and themselves get engaged in the material and care-- care
more about it.
So I just try to have fun with the material
and encourage the students to similarly have fun learning it.
So it all comes together.
Occasionally, we'll do a demonstration.
But a lot of the material in this class
is pretty theoretical.
So it's mostly board work and trying
to draw representative figures and things like that.