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Showing posts with the label divide and conquer

Hash-based Search

An example of a hash-based search, although using dictionaries.  The code is designed to manage lists of Person objects, with unique Id's as the key value, with a rudimentary hash function to assign to various lists. Salient Characteristic(s) Useful for managing large unsorted lists Divides the items into smaller hash-based buckets (divide and conquer) Generally excellent performance Sensitive to the choice of hash function and data structures chosen Note The Id key is not rigorous enough to guarantee uniqueness, and a better key might need to be selected, e.g., SSN, to prevent the same person being entered twice. Code using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace Algorithms {     //Example object to add and find in Hash Search example     public class Person     {         private int _Id;         public int Id          {     ...

Binary Search

This is the basic divide-and-conquer algorithm, requiring a sorted array. This repeatedly halves the remaining positions to search, until the value is found, or it determines that the value cannot be found. As mentioned, it requires a presorted array, or if unsorted, requires it is sorted. The benefits accrue in instances where the array is sorted once, but searched many times. On a hypothetical array of 100 items, a linear search has an average performances of O(n/2), or a search of half the positions, 50, to find the item. By comparison, the average performance of Binary Search is O(log n), which for 100 items translates into 4.6, a radically reduced number of iterations, but with greater requirements for logic and memory. Done in both C#, as an iterative while loop, and F#, as a recursion. C# using System; namespace Algorithms { class BinarySearch { public BinarySearch() { } public int Search(int num, int[] arrayToSearch) ...

Bucket Sort

The following uses the divide-and-conquer method of resolution, by dividing the problem into smaller arrays, sorting each smaller array, then reinserting the subarrays back into the original array.  This is not a pure solution, in that it uses the .NET List, rather than a linked list struct. using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace Algorithms {     class BucketSort     {         public int[] Sort()         {                //creates arbitrary array             int[] arrayToSort = { 11, 7, 22, 2, 33, 3, 17, 44, 4, 55, 5, 66, 6, 1, 77 };             //create bucket using hash, x/10             List<int>[] bucketList = CreateHashedArray(arrayToSort, 10);             //sort the bucket list back into the or...

Heap Sort

Heap Sort is interesting because the use of the 'heapify' method that creates a binary tree as a flat array. First, a binary tree, also known as a heap , is created, and then the same function is used to sort the elements. In a heap, the first node in the array at zero (0) is the top node of the binary tree. The next two (2) items are the two (2) subnodes of the top node, and so on.  For each node at a position (positionIndex), its 2 subnodes are in the following positions: int left = 2 * positionIndex + 1; int right = 2 *  positionIndex + 2; The CommonMethods.Swap() function is a reusable class , since swapping values by position is a common action during these example sorts. Class using System; namespace Algorithms {     class HeapSort     {         public int[]  Sort()         {             //creates array             int[] arrayTo...

QuickSort

This is similar to Median Sort, which I skipped, but Quicksort supersedes it.  This uses a similar strategy, but instead of finding the median, it accepts any value for the pivot index, then simply performs an insertion sort on the resulting partitioned array of 2 sub-arrays.  The insertion sort used here is from a prior post on Insertion Sort . Class using System; namespace Algorithms {     class QuickSort     {         public void Sort()         {             //creates array             int[] arrayToSort = { 11, 1, 22, 2, 33, 3, 44, 4, 55, 5, 66, 6, 7, 77 };             //gets pivotIndex, set at midpoint of arry             int pivotIndex = Partition(arrayToSort, 0, arrayToSort.Length - 1, (arrayToSort.Length - 1)/2);             //sorts...

Algorithms in a Nutshell

The following are some of the the chapters from Algorithm's in a Nutshell, from which I will produce code in .NET, specifically C#, VB.NET or F#, to clarify the principles for myself. Chapter 4. Sorting Algorithms ·        Section 4.1. Overview ·        Section 4.2. Insertion Sort ·        Section 4.3. Median Sort ·        Section 4.4. Quicksort ·        Section 4.5. Selection Sort ·        Section 4.6. Heap Sort ·        Section 4.7. Counting Sort ·        Section 4.8. Bucket Sort ·        Section 4.9. Criteria for Choosing a Sorting Algorithm ·        Section 4.10. References Chapter 5. Searching ·        Section 5.1....