English

Refined Quicksort asymptotics

Probability 2013-01-25 v2 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

The complexity of the Quicksort algorithm is usually measured by the number of key comparisons used during its execution. When operating on a list of nn data, permuted uniformly at random, the appropriately normalized complexity YnY_n is known to converge almost surely to a non-degenerate random limit YY. This assumes a natural embedding of all YnY_n on one probability space, e.g., via random binary search trees. In this note a central limit theorem for the error term in the latter almost sure convergence is shown: n2logn(YnY)dN(n),\sqrt{\frac{n}{2\log n}}(Y_n-Y) \stackrel{d}{\longrightarrow} {\cal N} \qquad (n\to\infty), where N{\cal N} denotes a standard normal random variable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1207.4556,
  title  = {Refined Quicksort asymptotics},
  author = {Ralph Neininger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.4556},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

revised version; title slightly changed; accepted for publication in Random Structures and Algorithms

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:38:14.434Z