insertion sort is strongostrong nlog n - stony brook university.pdfVIP

IN SERTI ON SORT is Michael A. Bender Martın´ Farach-Colton Miguel Mosteiro Abstract Traditional IN SERTION SORT runs in time because each insertion takes time. When people run IN SERTION SORT in the physical world, they leave gaps between items to accelerate inser- tions. Gaps help in computers as well. This paper shows that GAPPED IN SERTION SORT has insertion times of with high probability, yielding a total running time of with high probability. Keywords Sorting, Library Sort, Insertion Sort, Gapped Insertion Sort. ACM-class: F.2.2, E.5. arXiv: cs.DS/0407003. CoRR Subj-class: DS-Data Structures and Algorithms. 1 Introduction Success has its problems. While many technology companies are hemorrhaging money and employees, Google is flush with money and hiring vigorously. Google employees are cheerful and optimistic, with the exception of G—. G— maintains the mailboxes at Google. The mailbox technology consist of trays arranged in linear order and bolted to the wall. The names on the mailboxes are alphabetized. G— is grumpy after each new hire because, to make room for the th new employee, the names on mailboxes need to be shifted by one. University graduate programs in the US have also been growing vigorously, accepting as students those talented employees downsized from high-tech companies. At Stony Brook S— implements the mailbox protocol. Each time a new student arrives, S— makes room for the new student’s mailbox using the same technique as G—. However, S— only needs to shift names by one until a gap is reached, where the empty mailbox belonged to a student who graduated previously. Because the names have more or less random rank, S— does not need to shift many names before rea