Putting It in Order in the First Place
Last timeAlways Knowing the Smallest
Merging two ordered runs is easy, so split the collection until the pieces are trivially ordered and merge back up. That costs n log n, and no comparison sort can beat it.
The whole course has assumed the items were already in order. This lesson
earns that assumption, from one move that is almost too simple to be worth a
name.
The lesson stops here
1 more paragraph to go
You have read the opening. The rest of the argument, the problems that check whether it landed, and the lines worth keeping at the end all come with a plan.
The first lesson of every course in the library reads the whole way through, free, so you can see exactly what the rest of them are.
See the planThe contentsThis is the reading half
Starting the course gives you your own copy of it. Every idea on every page has problems standing under it, marked with a reason rather than a tick, and any sentence you do not believe can be opened and argued with. None of that can happen on a page nobody owns.
The contents