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.
