Sorting : Arranging the data

Formally ,

Sorting is arranging the elements of data/list/arrays in increasing or decreasing order of desired property .

In general maximum sorting orders are numerical or lexicographical .

Now , the question arise : Why sorting ?

Consider an array of data having 2^100 elements in it .

Now if we need to pick a particular element from it , we need to perform a search operation . If data is sorted , we'll perform binary search and if data is not sorted we'll perform linear search .

Lets check the difference between binary search and linear search !

1. Linear search 

A linear search is a simple searching algorithm. It searches the desired element by comparing the each element with the given element in the sequence . So , in the worst case , it will make n number of comparisons . Particularly for this example , it will perform 2^100 comparisons. And if one comparison is done in microsecond , still it will take years to complete the process .

2. Binary Search

Unlike linear search binary search can be performed on sorted data only . It follows the logic as follows :

• It compares the middle element first 
• If the required element is greater or smaller than that it skips the other half 
• In every step it checks with this "middle element" logic.

So , number of searches reduces to log ₂ n for total n elements !

• So , for the required case it will make log ₂ n = log ₂ 2^100 = 100 comparisons only!

So , for same case , i.e. microsecond for comparison the whole procedure will be completed in less than a millisecond !

So , clearly we can conclude that sorting make this much difference .

Now , the main question : How to sort ?

There are many sorting algorithms like :

• Bubble sort 
• Selection sort
• Quick sort 
• Insertion sort 
• Merge sort .
• Radix sort etc.

We , in our future posts will discuss few of them in detail .

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Thank you !