Advanced Programming I Lecture Notes

1 February 2007 • Faster Sorting

Outline

• Asymptotically faster sorting.

• A fast O(n²) sort.

• A worst-case O(n log n) sort.

• A worst-case O(n) sort.

Faster Sorting

• Remember:

  It's faster only when it's asymptotically faster.

A Question Reasked

• The question can't be answered until the array's completely sorted.

• Not quite:

  

  • This answer doesn't require sorting.

Partitioning

• Partitioning can place x (the pivot):

partition(T a[], int left, int right)
  T pivot = a[left]
  int l = left + 1

  while l < right
    if (a[l] ≤ pivot) l++
    else if (pivot < a[right - 1]) right--
    else swap(a[l++], a[--right])

  swap(a[left], a[--l])
  return l

Quicksort

• Partitioning divides the array into thirds.

  • Repeatedly call partition on the unsorted parts

quicksort(T a[], int left, int right)

  if right > 1 + left
    int mid = partition(a, left, right)
    quicksort(a, left, mid)
    quicksort(a, mid + 1, right)

Quicksort Analysis

• partition() does O(n) work.

• N elements divide in "half" O(log n) times.

  • Each half gets passed to quicksort(), and so to partition().

    • Remember, constants (2 here) don't matter.

• O(log n) iterations, O(n) work per iteration.

  • Quicksort sorts with O(n log n) work.

Oh Really?

Well, No

• partition() may not divide into halves.

  • The pivot may be an extreme value.

    

• This has two consequences:

  1. partition() does little useful work.

  2. There are O(n) instead of O(log n) iterations.

     • Quicksort is now O(n²).

Is It?

• Worst-case behavior occurs on mostly sorted data.

Avoiding Worst-Case Behavior

• Avoid worst-case quicksort behavior by

  • Not using quicksort on sorted data.

  • Randomly permuting the data.

    • Not too practical.

  • Making a more artful pivot-value choice.

Artful Pivot Choices

• The 3-median pivot value.

  max(min(a[left], a[(left + right)/2])
      min(max(a[left], a[(left + right)/2]), a[right - 1]))
  

• The median-index value.

  a[(left + right)/2]
  

• The random-index value.

  a[left + (rand() mod (right - left))]
  

Do They Work?

• Worst-case behavior is still O(n²).

  • But it has a low probability of occurrence.

Rigorous Halving

• Quicksort slows down when it can't divide the data evenly.

  • Consistent, even halving results in O(n log n) behavior.

• Is there a sort organized around consistent, even halving?

Divide to Conquer

• Now recurse on the two halves.

  • When do you stop?

Reuniting Divisions

• A segment of size less than two is sorted.

• Two sorted subsegments can be merged back into the original segment.

  • And the original segment will be sorted too.

  

Merging

Mergesort

mergesort(T * aleft, aright, tleft, tright)
  int len = aright - aleft
  if len > 1
    int h = len/2
    T * amid = aleft + h
    T * tmid = tleft + h

    mergesort(aleft, amid, tleft, tmid)
    mergesort(amid, aright, tmid, tright)
    merge(
      tleft, tright, aleft, amid, aright)

Performance

• The extra copying extracts a run-time cost.

Caveat Emptor

• What does O(n) extra space buy?

• Is it worth it?

Some Problems

• AT&T handles about a billion phone calls per day.

  • They all need to be recorded.

  • How do you do it?

• The U.S. Post Office handles about 580 million pieces of mail a day.

  • They all need to be routed.

  • How do you do it?

The Big Idea

• In both cases, the keys are fixed-length numbers.

• A key can be re-interpreted as a base-M number.

  • M is the radix.

  • Two common values are M = 2ⁱ, i > 0, and M = 10.

• The key is decomposed into radix-M digits.

A Radix-10 Example

• To sort a set of three-decimal-digit numbers:

  • Sort the 100s: 000 to 099, 100 to 199, ...

  • Sort each 100s group by 10s: 00 to 09, 10 to 19, ...

  • Sort each 10s group by 1s: 0 to 9.

Radix Exchange Sort

• The previous example with radix-2 digits (binary) is called radix exchange sorting.

• With only two digits, radix exchange sort is similar to quicksort.

  • The partition segregates the ith 0 and 1 bits in the key.

Example Radix Exchange Sort

Radix Exchange Sort

re-sort(int * left, int * right, int bit)

  // Place elements in [left, right) 
  // in increasing order.

  if left + 1 < right and bit < 32
    int * mid = partition(left, right, bit)
    re-sort(left, mid, bit + 1)
    re-sort(mid + 1, right, bit + 1)

Performance

• Given n b-bit keys, radix exchange sort does

  • O(n) work for each partition, and

  • O(b) partitions.

• Radix exchange sort does O(nb) worst-case work.

  • This is more than O(n) but sometimes less than O(n log n).

  • b is independent of n, but is not constant.

Oh Really?

• When b = 8, b < log₂ n when n = 256, but
  when b = 64, b < log₂ n when n > 1.8×10¹⁹.

The Last Step

• We still don't have a linear sort.

• Let's go back to the mail room. How does a mailroom sort mail?

  • Each recipient has a mailbox.

  • Each piece of mail is placed in the recipient's mailbox.

  • This is a linear-time sort.

Requirements

• A linear-time sort has two requirements:

  1. Enough space to store the sorted values.

  2. A constant-time addressing scheme to locate values in the space.

• A sort meeting these requirements is known as a bucket (or distribution) sort.

Data Structures

• An array meets the linear-sort requirements.

  • Its size is equal to the number of elements being sorted.

  • Indexing is a constant function of the values being sorted.

• Other data structures can also support linear-time searches.

Bucket Sort

• Assume 3-digit decimal numbers.

  bucket_sort(int a[], int n)
  
    int counts[1000]
  
    for i = 1 to n
      counts[a[i] + 1]++
  
    int j = 1
    for i = 1 to 1000
      while counts[i]-- > 0
        a[j++] = i - 1
  
    assert(j == n)