![]() ![]() For example, binary search makes approximately log 2 n comparisons, and ternary search makes approximately log 3 n comparisons. Remember: by far the most important performance improvement is when the code goes from "not working" to "working".Īsymptotically speaking, it doesn't matter. ![]() People who actually do program their own sorting algorithm for some reason will tend to stick to the simple 2-way variant because less potential for errors beats 20% better performance most of the time. For example, the Java 7 API actually uses the dual-pivot quicksort. These days hardly anyone programs their own sorting algorithms anymore they use one provided by a library. When is this faster?Īpparently a dual pivot variant of quicksort can be proven to require the same number of comparisons but on average 20% fewer swaps, so it's a net gain. I have also seen many references to 3-way quicksort. Whether that is good or bad depends on which is more expensive in your hardware. In exchange, you reduce the recursion depth by a factor of ln(2)/ln(3) = 0.63, so you have 37% fewer swaps, but 2*0.63 = 26% more comparisons (and memory accesses). Results in a more complex implementation but doesn't change the fundamental (Big O) characteristic of the algorithm - the difference is a constant factor, and may result in a slowdown if the division and recombination of more than 2 subsets creates additional overhead.įor example, if you do a 3-way merge sort, then in the recombination phase you now have to find the biggest of 3 elements for every element, which requires 2 comparisons instead of 1, so you'll do twice as many comparisons overall. Mainly because splitting it into more than two parts and recombining more than two results Instead, it is divided into pieces that are trivial to solve (like sorting two numbers), then those are solved trivially and the results recombined in a way that yields a solution for the full data set.īut why not split the data set in three parts? Four? n? Usually the point is that the algorithms cannot "deal with the whole data set" at all. That is not the essence of divide-and-conquer algorithms. ![]() It does make sense to me that this makes it faster to solve a problem if the two halves takes less than half the work of dealing with the whole data set. ![]()
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