English

Density functions for QuickQuant and QuickVal

Probability 2021-10-01 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

We prove that, for every 0t10 \leq t \leq 1, the limiting distribution of the scale-normalized number of key comparisons used by the celebrated algorithm QuickQuant to find the ttth quantile in a randomly ordered list has a Lipschitz continuous density function ftf_t that is bounded above by 1010. Furthermore, this density ft(x)f_t(x) is positive for every x>min{t,1t}x > \min\{t, 1 - t\} and, uniformly in tt, enjoys superexponential decay in the right tail. We also prove that the survival function 1Ft(x)=x ⁣ft(y)dy1 - F_t(x) = \int_x^{\infty}\!f_t(y)\,\mathrm{d}y and the density function ft(x)f_t(x) both have the right tail asymptotics exp[xlnxxlnlnx+O(x)]\exp [-x \ln x - x \ln \ln x + O(x)]. We use the right-tail asymptotics to bound large deviations for the scale-normalized number of key comparisons used by QuickQuant.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.14749,
  title  = {Density functions for QuickQuant and QuickVal},
  author = {James Allen Fill and Wei-Chun Hung},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.14749},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

72 pages; submitted for publication in September, 2021

R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:29:57.311Z