The limiting distribution for the number of symbol comparisons used by QuickSort is nondegenerate (extended abstract)

erate (Extended Abstract) Patrick Bindjeme1† and James Allen Fill1 1 Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, The Johns Hopkins University, 34th and Charles Streets, Baltimore, MD 21218-2682 USA received 31 Jan 2012, revised 23rd March 2012, accepted tomorrow. In a continuous-time setting, Fill (2012) proved, for a large class of probabilistic sources, that the number of symbol comparisons used by QuickSort, when centered by subtracting the mean and scaled by dividing by time, has a limiting distribution, but proved little about that limiting random variable Y —not even that it is nondegenerate. We establish the nondegeneracy of Y . The proof is perhaps surprisingly difficult.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Patrick Bindjeme, James Allen Fill
• Keywords: Charles Streets, CORR 2012, Education, Johns Hopkins University, Quicksort