Heap Sort has a worst case complexity of O(nlogn) while Quicksort has O(n^2).
But emperical evidences say quicksort is superior. Why is that?
Heap Sort has a worst case complexity of O(nlogn) while Quicksort has O(n^2) .
Share
Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Heap Sort has a worst case complexity of O(nlogn) while Quicksort has O(n^2).
But emperical evidences say quicksort is superior. Why is that?
One of the major factors is that quicksort has better locality of reference — the next thing to be accessed is usually close in memory to the thing you just looked at. By contrast, heapsort jumps around significantly more. Since things that are close together will likely be cached together, quicksort tends to be faster.
However, quicksort’s worst-case performance is significantly worse than heapsort’s is. Because some critical applications will require guarantees of speed performance, heapsort is the right way to go for such cases.