Five Sorting Algorithms That Ran The World

Author(s): Dr. Mandar Karhade, MD. PhD.

Originally published on Towards AI.

A Practical Guide to Sorting algorithms in action

The evolution of sorting algorithms is a fascinating journey through the history of computer science, reflecting the continuous quest for efficiency and speed in data processing. In the early days, simple algorithms like Bubble Sort, conceived in the late 1950s, and Selection Sort provided foundational methods for ordering data, albeit with limited efficiency. As computational demands grew, these O(n²) algorithms quickly showed their limitations, especially with larger datasets. The 1960s marked a significant milestone by introducing more sophisticated algorithms like Merge Sort, developed by John von Neumann, and QuickSort, invented by Tony Hoare in 1960. These algorithms, operating at a more favorable time complexity of O(n log n), set new standards for efficiency.

The subsequent decades saw further advancements with the development of Heap Sort in 1964 by J. W. J. Williams, which also operates at O(n log n) complexity and offers stable performance regardless of the input data’s initial order. In the 1990s and beyond, introspective sorting algorithms like Introsort, developed by David Musser in 1997, began to combine the best aspects of QuickSort, Heap Sort, and Insertion Sort, automatically choosing the most efficient strategy based on the dataset’s characteristics.

These developments responded to the growing need for faster and more… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI