SORTING MIS 121
Sorting
•Major activity of computers
•Major topic in MIS 301
•Over a hundred sorting algorithms
•Classic text is Donald Knuth, Sorting and Searching, Second Edition, Addison Wesley,
1998. (Volume 3 of Art of Computer Programming) see
www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/∼knuth/index.html1.
Sorting Algorithms
•Two kinds of sorting algorithms (from standpoint of MIS 301 student)
— basic algorithms (easy to understand but slow)
— efficient algorithms (faster, harder to explain)2.
Educational Challenge
•Major problem in computer education is to describe sorting algorithms so they can be un-
derstood and you can use them
•Usual solution is to first show basic algorithms ... but then students wind up using them
with disastrous results3.
Basic and Efficient Algorithms
•Basic
— insertion
— selection
— bubblesort (the worst of all! never use it!)4.
Basic and Efficient Algorithms—2
•Efficient
— ShellSort
— HeapSort
— QuickSort5.
Sorting Times for 16,000 Integers
SORTING Printed 12 November 1998, Page 1
