Sorting Applications

Commercial Computing:

Most of this information is sorted by government agencies, financial institutions, and commercial firms. No matter what type of information is being processed — accounts to be sorted by name or number, transactions to be sorted by time or location, mail to be sorted by postal code or address, files to be sorted by name or date, or anything else — a sorting algorithm will undoubtedly be used at some point.

Information Searching:

The traditional binary search technique can efficiently search through data when it is kept in sorted order.

Operations analysis:

Assume we have N jobs to finish, each of which takes tj seconds to process. Even while we must finish every task, we also want to increase client satisfaction by speeding up job completion times as much as possible. This is what is known to be achieved by the shortest processing time first rule, where jobs are scheduled in increasing order of processing time. Another example is the load-balancing problem, where we need to arrange all of the jobs on the processors to finish as soon as possible. In this scenario, we have M identical processors and N jobs to finish. Since this particular problem is NP-hard, we do not anticipate discovering a workable method to compute an ideal timetable. The longest processing time first rule, which considers the jobs in decreasing order of processing time and assigns each job to the processor that becomes available first, is one technique that is known to result in a successful schedule.

Event-driven modeling:

Numerous scientific applications involve simulation, where the goal of the calculation is to simulate a certain feature of the real world to comprehend it better. Such simulations may need the right algorithms and data structures to be performed effectively.

Mathematical calculations:

Accuracy in scientific computing is frequently a consideration (how close are we to the correct answer?). When doing millions of computations with approximated values, such as when using the floating-point representation of real numbers that we frequently use on computers, accuracy is crucial. Priority queues and sorting are two techniques used by some numerical algorithms to regulate calculation accuracy.

Combinatorial search:

The definition of a collection of configurations with clear transitions from one configuration to the next and a priority assigned to each transition is a classic artificial intelligence paradigm. A start configuration and a goal configuration (which corresponds to having fixed the issue) are also defined. The A* algorithm solves problems by placing the initial configuration on the priority queue, removing the highest-priority configuration, and adding to the priority queue any configurations that can be reached from that with a single step (excluding the one just removed).

Prim’s algorithm and Dijkstra’s algorithm:

The traditional algorithms for processing graphs are Prim’s and Dijkstra’s algorithms. In arranging graph searches, priority queues are crucial since they allow for effective algorithms.

Kruskal’s algorithm:

Another well-known algorithm for graphs with weighted edges is Kruskal’s, which works by processing the edges in ascending weight order. The sorting expense takes up most of its running time.

Huffman Compression:

The traditional data compression algorithm Huffman compression works by combining the two smallest items in a group of items with integer weights to create a new item whose weight is the sum of its two components. This operation will be carried out right away utilizing a priority queue.

String Processing:

Sorting is a common foundation for string processing techniques. Examples of algorithms based on first sorting suffixes of the strings are those that discover the longest common prefix among a group of strings and the longest repeating substring in a given string.

Which sorting method should I employ? The specifics of the application and implementation strongly influence which algorithm is best possible, however, we have researched various general-purpose techniques that can be almost as successful as the best possible for a wide range of applications. The following table serves as a general reference and enumerates the key features of the sort algorithms:

No matter how big or little the data set, merge sort can be effective. On the other hand, huge datasets do not lend themselves to the rapid sort. In some situations, such as with small data sets, quick sort is quicker than merge sort. Although there are many sorting algorithms, only a few of them are used often in real-world applications. Insertion sort is frequently used for small data sets, while asymptotically efficient sorting — typically heapsort, merge sort, or quicksort — is utilized for huge data sets.

References

Merge Sort vs Quick Sort. (n.d.). OpenGenus IQ: Computing Expertise & Legacy. Retrieved September 26, 2022, from https://iq.opengenus.org/merge-sort-vs-quick-sort/#:~:

Sorting Applications. (2018). Princeton.edu. https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/25applications/

Which sorting algorithm is best for large data? — TipsFolder.com. (n.d.). Tipsfolder.com. Retrieved September 26, 2022, from https://tipsfolder.com/which-sorting-algorithm-best-large-data-7af0cef13551eae7385adb76fb6f73bc/

Why Quick Sort preferred for Arrays and Merge Sort for Linked Lists? | Linked list. (2021, August 24). PrepBytes Blog. https://www.prepbytes.com/blog/linked-list/why-quick-sort-preferred-for-arrays-and-merge-sort-for-linked-lists/