I'm not sure what Bret Victor had in mind, but the second part of Skiena's text The Algorithm Design Manual already does a good job at this. Similar write ups a

I'm not sure what Bret Victor had in mind, but the second part of Skiena's text The Algorithm Design Manual already does a good job at this. Similar write ups are available online [0], in less detail than the text, e.g. [1]. They all open with a pictorial representation of possible input and corresponding output to aid in scanning when you have a problem to solve. There is also the Encyclopedia of Algorithms [2], and the NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [3], history of at [4]. [0] http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/ http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/ [1] http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/files/dictionaries.shtml http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/files/dictionaries.shtml [2] https://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+science/book/978-0-387-30770-1 https://www.springer.com/computer/theoretical+computer+scien... [3] http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/ http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_Algorithms_and_Data_Structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_Algorithms_and_D...