Optimal Sampling Strategies in Quicksort

It is well known that the performance of quicksort can be improved by selecting the median of a sample of elements as the pivot of each partitioning stage. For large samples the partitions are better, but the amount of additional comparisons and exchanges to find the median of the sample also increases. We show in this paper that the optimal sample size to minimize the average total cost of quicksort, as a function of the size n of the current subarray size, is a

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: ICALP
• Authors: Conrado Martínez, Salvador Roura
• Keywords: Average Total Cost, Current Subarray Size, ICALP 1998, Optimal Sample Size, Programming Languages