CS 332: Algorithms

Quicksort
 Review: Quicksort
 Sorts in place
 Sorts O(n lg n) in the average case
 Sorts O(n2) in the worst case
 But in practice, it’s quick
 And the worst case doesn’t happen often (but more
on this later…)
 Quicksort
 Another divide-and-conquer algorithm
 The array A[p..r] is partitioned into two non-
empty subarrays A[p..q] and A[q+1..r]
 Invariant: All elements in A[p..q] are less than all
elements in A[q+1..r]
 The subarrays are recursively sorted by calls to
quicksort
 Unlike merge sort, no combining step: two
subarrays form an already-sorted array
 Quicksort Code
Quicksort(A, p, r)
{
if (p < r)
{
q = Partition(A, p, r);
Quicksort(A, p, q);
Quicksort(A, q+1, r);
}
}
 Partition
 Clearly, all the action takes place in the
partition() function
 Rearranges the subarray in place
 End result:
 Two subarrays
 All values in first subarray  all values in second
 Returns the index of the “pivot” element
separating the two subarrays
 How do you suppose we implement this?
 Partition In Words
 Partition(A, p, r):
 Select an element to act as the “pivot” (which?)
 Grow two regions, A[p..i] and A[j..r]
 All elements in A[p..i] <= pivot
 All elements in A[j..r] >= pivot
 Increment i until A[i] >= pivot
 Decrement j until A[j] <= pivot
 Swap A[i] and A[j]
 Repeat until i >= j
Note: slightly different from
 Return j book’s partition()
 Partition Code
Partition(A, p, r)
x = A[p];
i = p - 1; Illustrate on
j = r + 1; A = {5, 3, 2, 6, 4, 1, 3, 7};
while (TRUE)
repeat
j--;
until A[j] <= x;
repeat
What is the running time of
i++;
partition()?
until A[i] >= x;
if (i < j)
Swap(A, i, j);
else
return j;
 Partition Code
Partition(A, p, r)
x = A[p];
i = p - 1;
j = r + 1;
while (TRUE)
repeat
j--;
until A[j] <= x;
repeat
i++; partition() runs in O(n) time
until A[i] >= x;
if (i < j)
Swap(A, i, j);
else
return j;
 Analyzing Quicksort
 What will be the worst case for the algorithm?
 Partition is always unbalanced
 What will be the best case for the algorithm?
 Partition is perfectly balanced
 Which is more likely?
 The latter, by far, except...
 Will any particular input elicit the worst case?
 Yes: Already-sorted input
 Analyzing Quicksort
 In the worst case:
T(1) = (1)
T(n) = T(n - 1) + (n)
 Works out to
T(n) = (n2)
 Analyzing Quicksort
 In the best case:
T(n) = 2T(n/2) + (n)
 What does this work out to?
T(n) = (n lg n)
 Improving Quicksort
 The real liability of quicksort is that it runs in
O(n2) on already-sorted input
 Book discusses two solutions:
 Randomize the input array, OR
 Pick a random pivot element
 How will these solve the problem?
 By insuring that no particular input can be chosen
to make quicksort run in O(n2) time
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 Assuming random input, average-case running
time is much closer to O(n lg n) than O(n 2)
 First, a more intuitive explanation/example:
 Suppose that partition() always produces a 9-to-1
split. This looks quite unbalanced!
 The recurrence is thus: Use n instead of O(n)
for convenience (how?)
T(n) = T(9n/10) + T(n/10) + n
 How deep will the recursion go? (draw it)
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 Intuitively, a real-life run of quicksort will
produce a mix of “bad” and “good” splits
 Randomly distributed among the recursion tree
 Pretend for intuition that they alternate between
best-case (n/2 : n/2) and worst-case (n-1 : 1)
 What happens if we bad-split root node, then
good-split the resulting size (n-1) node?
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 Intuitively, a real-life run of quicksort will
produce a mix of “bad” and “good” splits
 Randomly distributed among the recursion tree
 Pretend for intuition that they alternate between
best-case (n/2 : n/2) and worst-case (n-1 : 1)
 What happens if we bad-split root node, then
good-split the resulting size (n-1) node?
 We fail English
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 Intuitively, a real-life run of quicksort will
produce a mix of “bad” and “good” splits
 Randomly distributed among the recursion tree
 Pretend for intuition that they alternate between best-
case (n/2 : n/2) and worst-case (n-1 : 1)
 What happens if we bad-split root node, then good-
split the resulting size (n-1) node?
 We end up with three subarrays, size 1, (n-1)/2, (n-1)/2
 Combined cost of splits = n + n -1 = 2n -1 = O(n)
 No worse than if we had good-split the root node!
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 Intuitively, the O(n) cost of a bad split
(or 2 or 3 bad splits) can be absorbed
into the O(n) cost of each good split
 Thus running time of alternating bad and good
splits is still O(n lg n), with slightly higher
constants
 How can we be more rigorous?
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 For simplicity, assume:
 All inputs distinct (no repeats)
 Slightly different partition() procedure
 partition around a random element, which is not included
in subarrays
 all splits (0:n-1, 1:n-2, 2:n-3, … , n-1:0) equally likely
 What is the probability of a particular split
happening?
 Answer: 1/n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 So partition generates splits
(0:n-1, 1:n-2, 2:n-3, … , n-2:1, n-1:0)
each with probability 1/n
 If T(n) is the expected running time,

1 n 1
T n    T k  T n  1  k   n 
n k 0
 What is each term under the summation for?
 What is the (n) term for?
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 So…
1 n 1
T n    T k  T n  1  k   n 
n k 0

2 n 1 Write it on
  T k  n  the board
n k 0
 Note: this is just like the book’s recurrence (p166),
except that the summation starts with k=0
 We’ll take care of that in a second
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 What’s the answer?
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 What’s the inductive hypothesis?
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 T(n)  an lg n + b for some constants a and b
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 T(n)  an lg n + b for some constants a and b
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 What value?
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 T(n)  an lg n + b for some constants a and b
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 The value k in the recurrence
 Prove that it follows for n
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 We can solve this recurrence using the dreaded
substitution method
 Guess the answer
 T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Assume that the inductive hypothesis holds
 T(n)  an lg n + b for some constants a and b
 Substitute it in for some value < n
 The value k in the recurrence
 Prove that it follows for n
 Grind through it…
 Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
2 n 1
T n    T k  n  The recurrence to be solved
n k 0
2 n 1
  ak lg k  b  n  Plug
What
in inductive
are we doing
hypothesis
here?
n k 0
n 1
2 
  b   ak lg k  b   n  Expand
Whatout
arethe
we k=0 case
doing here?
n k 1 
2 n 1 2b
  ak lg k  b   n  2b/n is just a constant,
What are we doing here?
so fold it into (n)
n k 1 n
2 n 1
  ak lg k  b  n  Note: leaving the same
recurrence as the book
n k 1
 Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case

2 n 1
T n    ak lg k  b  n  The recurrence to be solved
n k 1
2 n 1 2 n 1
  ak lg k   b  n  Distribute
What arethewe
summation
doing here?
n k 1 n k 1
2a n  1 2b
  k lg k  (n  1)  n  Evaluate the summation:
What are we doing here?
b+b+…+b = b (n-1)
n k 1 n
2a n  1
  k lg k  2b  n  Since n-1<n,
What 2b(n-1)/n
are we < 2b
doing here?
n k 1
This summation gets its own set of slides later
 Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case

2a n  1
T n    k lg k  2b  n  The recurrence to be solved
n k 1
2a  1 2 1 2
  n lg n  n   2b  n  What We’llthe
prove this later
hell?
n 2 8 
a
 an lg n  n  2b  n  Distribute
What arethewe(2a/n)
doingterm
here?
4
 a 
 an lg n  b   n  b  n  Remember, our goal is to get
What are we doing here?
 4  T(n)  an lg n + b
 an lg n  b Pick a large enough that
How did we do this?
an/4 dominates (n)+b
Analyzing Quicksort: Average Case
 So T(n)  an lg n + b for certain a and b
 Thus the induction holds
 Thus T(n) = O(n lg n)
 Thus quicksort runs in O(n lg n) time on average
(phew!)
 Oh yeah, the summation…