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math.PR/0105246

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Title: Approximating the limiting Quicksort distribution
Authors: James Allen Fill (Johns Hopkins Univ. ), Svante Janson (Uppsala Univ. )
Categories: math.PR Probability Theory
Comments: 30 pages. See also http://www.mts.jhu.edu/~fill/ and http://www.math.uu.se/~svante/ . Submitted for publication in January, 2001
Report number: 615, Department of Mathematical Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University
MSC: 68W40 (primary), 68P10, 60E05, 60E10, 60F05 (secondary)

Abstract: The limiting distribution of the normalized number of comparisons used by Quicksort to sort an array of n numbers is known to be the unique fixed point with zero mean of a certain distributional transformation S. We study the convergence to the limiting distribution of the sequence of distributions obtained by iterating the transformation S, beginning with a (nearly) arbitrary starting distribution. We demonstrate geometrically fast convergence for various metrics and discuss some implications for numerical calculations of the limiting Quicksort distribution. Finally, we give companion lower bounds which show that the convergence is not faster than geometric.

Owner: James Allen Fill
Version 1: Tue, 29 May 2001 16:52:11 GMT

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