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arXiv · 1201.6444

The limiting distribution for the number of symbol comparisons used by QuickSort is nondegenerate (extended abstract)

Patrick Bindjeme·James Allen Fill
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Abstract

In a continuous-time setting, Fill (2010) proved, for a large class of probabilistic sources, that the number of symbol comparisons used by QuickSort, when centered by subtracting the mean and scaled by dividing by time, has a limiting distribution, but proved little about that limiting random variable Y -- not even that it is nondegenerate. We establish the nondegeneracy of Y. The proof is perhaps surprisingly difficult.

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Patrick Bindjeme, James Allen Fill. 2012-01-31. The limiting distribution for the number of symbol comparisons used by QuickSort is nondegenerate (extended abstract). https://arxiv.org/abs/1201.6444

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