From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: rchiu@cs.iastate.edu (Richard Chiu) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/17 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 174667159 references: <4uaqqg$203@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <01bb84b4$75304ce0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4ubnhr$714@news1.mnsinc.com> <01bb8536$892ee260$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4ud8m5$ka5@news1.mnsinc.com> <320bf503.8426726@nntp.ix.netcom.com> organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: miker3@ix.netcom.com (Mike Rubenstein) writes: >But that is not always true. >A number of years ago I developed a program that had to do a large >number of sorts with the following characteristics: > 1. The mean number of items to be sorted was about 5. In a > test sample of a million cases, the larges number of items > to be sorted was 35. > 2. The items were usually in order. In the test sample, 90% > were in order, and most of the rest were in order except > for a single interchange of adjacent items. Only 8 were > out of order by more than three interchanges or required > interchanges of nonadjacent items. >Care to try this with quicksort? or heapsort? A good old O(n^2) >insertion sort works quite nicely. By the same thread of reasoning, a program that does nothing but reture the inputs will be the best algorithm for sorting if the numbers are already sorted. (Which is true!) Richard