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"Mostly-sorted" is a very vague definition.
by chkas 7y ago
"Mostly-sorted" is a very vague definition.
- seanhunter 7y agoUsually what people mean by mostly sorted in CS is that there is some small K such that each element in the input is no more than K places from the position it would be in if the input was sorted.
- chkas 7y agoAccording to this definition, the "random tail" test data is not "mostly sorted".
- seanhunter 7y agoWell you could extend the definition to allow a small number of items which are entirely out of place. The point is that the right sort algorithm depends a lot on tthe distribution of input data and how much you care about worst-case vs average case trade offs.