我在一次面试中被问到这个问题。它们都是O(nlogn),但大多数人使用快速排序而不是归并排序。为什么呢?
当前回答
One of the reason is more philosophical. Quicksort is Top->Down philosophy. With n elements to sort, there are n! possibilities. With 2 partitions of m & n-m which are mutually exclusive, the number of possibilities go down in several orders of magnitude. m! * (n-m)! is smaller by several orders than n! alone. imagine 5! vs 3! *2!. 5! has 10 times more possibilities than 2 partitions of 2 & 3 each . and extrapolate to 1 million factorial vs 900K!*100K! vs. So instead of worrying about establishing any order within a range or a partition,just establish order at a broader level in partitions and reduce the possibilities within a partition. Any order established earlier within a range will be disturbed later if the partitions themselves are not mutually exclusive.
任何自下而上的排序方法,如归并排序或堆排序,就像工人或雇员的方法一样,人们很早就开始在微观层面进行比较。但是,一旦在它们之间发现了一个元素,这个顺序就必然会丢失。这些方法非常稳定和可预测,但要做一定量的额外工作。
Quick Sort is like Managerial approach where one is not initially concerned about any order , only about meeting a broad criterion with No regard for order. Then the partitions are narrowed until you get a sorted set. The real challenge in Quicksort is in finding a partition or criterion in the dark when you know nothing about the elements to sort. That is why we either need to spend some effort to find a median value or pick 1 at random or some arbitrary "Managerial" approach . To find a perfect median can take significant amount of effort and leads to a stupid bottom up approach again. So Quicksort says just a pick a random pivot and hope that it will be somewhere in the middle or do some work to find median of 3 , 5 or something more to find a better median but do not plan to be perfect & don't waste any time in initially ordering. That seems to do well if you are lucky or sometimes degrades to n^2 when you don't get a median but just take a chance. Any way data is random. right. So I agree more with the top ->down logical approach of quicksort & it turns out that the chance it takes about pivot selection & comparisons that it saves earlier seems to work better more times than any meticulous & thorough stable bottom ->up approach like merge sort. But
其他回答
当我试验这两种排序算法时,通过计算递归调用的次数, 快速排序始终比归并排序具有更少的递归调用。 这是因为快速排序有枢轴,而在下一个递归调用中不包括枢轴。这样快速排序可以比归并排序更快地达到递归基本情况。
亩! 快速排序并不比归并排序更好,它非常适合于不同类型的应用。
归并排序是值得考虑的,如果速度是本质,糟糕的最差情况性能不能容忍,并且有额外的空间可用
你说他们«他们都是O(nlogn)[…]»。这是错误的。«快速排序使用大约n^2/2比较在最坏的情况下。
然而,根据我的经验,最重要的属性是在使用带有命令式范式的编程语言进行排序时,可以轻松实现顺序访问。
1 Sedgewick,算法
实际上,快速排序是O(n2)。它的平均情况运行时间是O(nlog(n)),但最坏情况是O(n2),这发生在在包含很少唯一项的列表上运行时。随机化花费O(n)。当然,这并没有改变最坏的情况,它只是防止恶意用户使您的排序花费很长时间。
快速排序更受欢迎,因为它:
(MergeSort需要额外的内存,与要排序的元素数量成线性关系)。 有一个小的隐藏常数。
That's hard to say.The worst of MergeSort is n(log2n)-n+1,which is accurate if n equals 2^k(I have already proved this).And for any n,it's between (n lg n - n + 1) and (n lg n + n + O(lg n)).But for quickSort,its best is nlog2n(also n equals 2^k).If you divide Mergesort by quickSort,it equals one when n is infinite.So it's as if the worst case of MergeSort is better than the best case of QuickSort,why do we use quicksort?But remember,MergeSort is not in place,it require 2n memeroy space.And MergeSort also need to do many array copies,which we don't include in the analysis of algorithm.In a word,MergeSort is really faseter than quicksort in theroy,but in reality you need to consider memeory space,the cost of array copy,merger is slower than quick sort.I once made an experiment where I was given 1000000 digits in java by Random class,and it took 2610ms by mergesort,1370ms by quicksort.
正如其他人所注意到的,快速排序的最坏情况是O(n²),而归并排序和堆排序则停留在O(nlogn)。然而,在平均情况下,这三个都是O(nlogn);所以它们在大多数情况下是可比较的。
平均而言,快速排序更好的地方在于,内循环意味着将多个值与单个值进行比较,而在其他两个循环中,每次比较时两个项都是不同的。换句话说,Quicksort的读取次数是其他两种算法的一半。在现代cpu上,访问时间在很大程度上决定了性能,因此快速排序最终成为一个很好的首选。