frasette

frasette

A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms, Second Edition: Are Selection Sort steps wrong? (page 71)

Hi @jaywengrow,

I think the table of Selection Sort shows wrong Max number of steps.
For example, for N = 5 we sould have:

  • Comparsions: 10 + Swaps: 2

and not:

  • Comparsions: 10 + Swaps: 4

In the following code, edit size variable to the number of element you want (5,10,20,40,80), run it to print comparsions and steps, and their sum, for a worst case scenario with a descending order array:
fiddle url: JsFiddle

function selectionSort(array) {
  let comparsions = 0;
  let swaps = 0;
  for(let i = 0; i < array.length - 1; i++) {    
    let lowestNumberIndex = i;
    for(let j = i + 1; j < array.length; j++) {
      if(array[j] < array[lowestNumberIndex]) {
        lowestNumberIndex = j;
      }
      comparsions++;
    }
 
    if(lowestNumberIndex != i) {
      swaps++;
      let temp = array[i];
      array[i] = array[lowestNumberIndex];
      array[lowestNumberIndex] = temp;
    }
  }
  let steps = "Comparsions: " + comparsions + " Swaps: " + swaps;
  console.log(steps);
  return array;
}

// code to create a sample of array size = 5,10,20,40,80
let size    = 80;
let counter = size;
let sample  = new Array(size);

for (i = 0; i < size; i++) {
   sample[i] = counter;
   counter--;
}

console.log(selectionSort(sample))

What do you think? Thanks.

Marked As Solved

jaywengrow

jaywengrow

Author of A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms

Hi,

This is a really good catch! I think that for Selection Sort, the worst case scenario is still 4 swaps, but you’re right that an array in perfect descending order happens not to be the worst case scenario for Selection Sort.

An array like this: [5, 3, 1, 2, 4] - will still give you 4 swaps in Selection Sort.

I’ll have to clarify this in the next version. Thank you!

-Jay

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

jamis
The following is cross-posted from the original Ray Tracer Challenge forum, from a post by garfieldnate. I’m cross-posting it so that the...
New
mikecargal
Title: Hands-on Rust: question about get_component (page 295) (feel free to respond. “You dug you’re own hole… good luck”) I have somet...
New
cro
I am working on the “Your Turn” for chapter one and building out the restart button talked about on page 27. It recommends looking into ...
New
jeremyhuiskamp
Title: Web Development with Clojure, Third Edition, vB17.0 (p9) The create table guestbook syntax suggested doesn’t seem to be accepted ...
New
hgkjshegfskef
The test is as follows: Scenario: Intersecting a scaled sphere with a ray Given r ← ray(point(0, 0, -5), vector(0, 0, 1)) And s ← sphere...
New
digitalbias
Title: Build a Weather Station with Elixir and Nerves: Problem connecting to Postgres with Grafana on (page 64) If you follow the defau...
New
New
creminology
Skimming ahead, much of the following is explained in Chapter 3, but new readers (like me!) will hit a roadblock in Chapter 2 with their ...
New
rainforest
Hi, I’ve got a question about the implementation of PubSub when using a Phoenix.Socket.Transport behaviour rather than channels. Before ...
New
ggerico
I got this error when executing the plot files on macOS Ventura 13.0.1 with Python 3.10.8 and matplotlib 3.6.1: programming_ML/code/03_...
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Hello Devtalk World! Please let us know a little about who you are and where you’re from :nerd_face:
New
AstonJ
There’s a whole world of custom keycaps out there that I didn’t know existed! Check out all of our Keycaps threads here: https://forum....
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Learn different ways of writing concurrent code in Elixir and increase your application's performance, without sacrificing scalability or...
New
AstonJ
If you get Can't find emacs in your PATH when trying to install Doom Emacs on your Mac you… just… need to install Emacs first! :lol: bre...
New
husaindevelop
Inside our android webview app, we are trying to paste the copied content from another app eg (notes) using navigator.clipboard.readtext ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
25 puzzles that will make you a better C programmer by challenging your knowledge of the language, and explaining the technical details o...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Develop, deploy, and debug BEAM applications using BEAMOps: a new paradigm that focuses on scalability, fault tolerance, and owning each ...
New
AstonJ
This is a very quick guide, you just need to: Download LM Studio: https://lmstudio.ai/ Click on search Type DeepSeek, then select the o...
New
mindriot
Ok, well here are some thoughts and opinions on some of the ergonomic keyboards I have, I guess like mini review of each that I use enoug...
New

Sub Categories: