Quicksort and Large Deviations.

Quicksort may be the most familiar and important randomised algorithm studied in computer science. It is well known that the expected number of comparisons on any input of n distinct keys is Θ(n ln n), and the probability of a large deviation above the expected value is very small. This probability...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McDiarmid, C
Other Authors: Kucera, A
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Springer 2012
Description
Summary:Quicksort may be the most familiar and important randomised algorithm studied in computer science. It is well known that the expected number of comparisons on any input of n distinct keys is Θ(n ln n), and the probability of a large deviation above the expected value is very small. This probability was well estimated some time ago, with an ad-hoc proof: we shall revisit this result in the light of further work on concentration. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.