That's very cool. However, the anecdote I was sharing for comparison purposes specially referred to the median of median algorithms. This was also many years ag

That's very cool. However, the anecdote I was sharing for comparison purposes specially referred to the median of median algorithms. This was also many years ago, long before the paper above was written. I'm not saying that it's impossible to do it and always will be. Re-read what I've said if you like, and you'll see I am simply sharing an anecdote for the purposes of an analogy about this particular situation.