[ time for swap + time for find_min_index (v, i, n)] .
index 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 comments
--------------------------------------------------------- --------
| 4 3 9 6 1 7 0 initial
i=0 | 0 3 9 6 1 7 4 swap 0,4
i=1 | 0 1 9 6 3 7 4 swap 1,3
i=2 | 0 1 3 6 9 7 4 swap 3, 9
i=3 | 0 1 3 4 9 7 6 swap 6, 4
i=4 | 0 1 3 4 6 7 9 swap 9, 6
i=5 | 0 1 3 4 6 7 9 (done)
Here is a simple implementation in C:
int find_min_index (float [], int, int);
void swap (float [], int, int);
/* selection sort on array v of n floats */
void selection_sort (float v[], int n) {
int i;
/* for i from 0 to n-1, swap v[i] with the minimum
* of the i'th to the n'th array elements
*/
for (i=0; i<n-1; i++)
swap (v, i, find_min_index (v, i, n));
}
/* find the index of the minimum element of float array v from
* indices start to end
*/
int find_min_index (float v[], int start, int end) {
int i, mini;
mini = start;
for (i=start+1; i<end; i++)
if (v[i] < v[mini]) mini = i;
return mini;
}
/* swap i'th with j'th elements of float array v */
void swap (float v[], int i, int j) {
float t;
t = v[i];
v[i] = v[j];
v[j] = t;
}
Now we would like to analyze this algorithm. This means we want to
quantify the performance of the algorithm, i.e., the amount of time and
space taken in terms of n. We are mainly interested in
how the time and space requirements change as n grows large;
sorting 10 items is trivial for almost any reasonable algorithm
you can think of, but what about 1,000, 10,000, 1,000,000 or more
items?
For this example, the amount of space needed is clearly dominated by the memory consumed by the array, so we don't have to worry about it; if we can store the array, we can sort it.
So we are mainly interested in the amount of time the algorithm takes. One approach is to count the number of array accesses made during the execution of the algorithm; since each array access takes a certain (small) amount of time related to the hardware, this count is proportional to the time the algorithm takes.
We will end up with a function in terms of n that gives us the number of array accesses for the algorithm. We'll call this function T(n), for Time.
T(n) is the total number of accesses made from the beginning of selection_sort until the end. selection_sort itself simply calls swap and find_min_index as i goes from 0 to n-1, so
T(n) =(n-2 because the for loop goes from 0 up to but not including n-1). The swap function makes four accesses to the array, so the function is now
T(n) =If we look at find_min_index, we see it does two array accesses for each iteration through the for loop, and it does the for loop n - i - 1 times:
T(n) =With some mathematical manipulation, we can break this up into:
T(n) = 4(n-1) + 2n(n-1) - 2(n-1) - 2(everything times n-1 because we go from 0 to n-2, i.e., n-1 times). Remembering that the sum of i as i goes from 0 to n is (n(n+1))/2, then substituting in n-2 and cancelling out the 2's:
T(n) = 4(n-1) + 2n(n-1) - 2(n-1) - ((n-2)(n-1)).and to make a long story short,
T(n) = n² + 3n - 4 .So this function gives us the number of array accesses selection_sort makes for a given array size, and thus an idea of the amount of time it takes. There are other factors affecting the performance, for instance the loop overhead, other processes running on the system, and the fact that access time to memory is not really a constant. But this kind of analysis gives you a good idea of the amount of time you'll spend waiting, and allows you to compare this algorithms to other algorithms that have been analyzed in a similar way.
Another algorithm used for sorting is called merge sort. The details are somewhat more complicated and will be covered later in the course, but for now it's sufficient to state that a certain C implementation takes Tm(n) = 8n log n memory accesses to sort n elements. Let's look at a table of T(n) vs. Tm(n):
n T(n) Tm(n) --- ---- ----- 2 6 11 3 14 26 4 24 44 5 36 64 6 50 86 7 66 108 8 84 133 9 104 158 10 126 184 11 150 211 12 176 238 13 204 266 14 234 295 15 266 324 16 300 354 17 336 385 18 374 416 19 414 447 20 456 479T(n) seems to outperform Tm(n) here, so at first glance one might think selection sort is better than merge sort. But if we extend the table:
n T(n) Tm(n) --- ---- ----- 20 456 479 21 500 511 22 546 544 23 594 576 24 644 610 25 696 643 26 750 677 27 806 711 28 864 746 29 924 781 30 986 816we see that merge sort starts to take a little less time than selection sort for larger values of n. If we extend the table to large values:
n T(n) Tm(n) --- ---- ----- 100 10,296 3,684 1,000 1,002,996 55,262 10,000 100,029,996 736,827 100,000 10,000,299,996 9,210,340 1,000,000 1,000,002,999,996 110,524,084 10,000,000 100,000,029,999,996 1,289,447,652we see that merge sort does much better than selection sort. To put this in perspective, recall that a typical memory access is done on the order of nanoseconds, or billionths of a second. Selection sort on ten million items takes roughly 100 trillion accesses; if each one takes ten nanoseconds it will take 1,000,000 seconds, or about 11 and a half days to complete. Merge sort, with a "mere" 1.2 billion accesses, will be done in 12 seconds. For a billion elements, selection sort takes almost 32,000 years, while merge sort takes about 37 minutes. And, assuming a large enough RAM size, a trillion elements will take selection sort 300 million years, while merge sort will take 32 days. Since computer hardware is not very resilient to the very large asteroids that hit our planet roughly once every 100 million years causing mass extinctions, selection sort is not feasible for this task.