Comparing two ways to hand out exam papers to a 50-student classroom:
- Serial Column-Chain Distribution — the traditional method (teacher hands stacks to column fronts, passed back row by row).
- Radial Broadcast-Tree Distribution — hand the stack to the center student, who splits it 4 ways (front/back/left/right), and each recipient keeps splitting outward.
exam-distribution-algorithms.md— write-up with pseudocode, timing model, ASCII diagrams, and a Mermaid broadcast-tree diagram. Includes the full second-by-second timing derivation (24s traditional vs. 10s broadcast-tree, 58% faster).exam-distribution-algorithms.zh.md— 中文版说明文档 (Chinese version of the write-up).classroom-sim.html— a standalone, self-contained interactive simulation (vanilla JS/CSS/SVG, no build step, no dependencies). Open directly in a browser or serve as a static page. Lets you play/step/reset through either algorithm on a live 5×10 seat grid with an event log and timeline.classroom-sim.zh.html— 中文界面版模拟器 (Chinese-language UI version of the simulation, identical logic/timing).
No install needed — classroom-sim.html is a single static file:
open classroom-sim.html # macOS
# or
python3 -m http.server # then visit http://localhost:8000/classroom-sim.htmlTiming rules used throughout: 1 second to take your own paper, 1 second to hand the stack to one neighbor, and each student can only perform one action per second (no simultaneous handoffs).