15-451 Algorithms		9/08/04
							RECITATION NOTES
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Questions on mini or recurrences? Can do one or more examples,
depending on how comfortable people are.  E.g., T(n) = 3T(n/3) + n.
Go through recursion tree -- see how same amount of work is done at
each level.  Can also do T(n) = 2T(n/3)+n.

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Problem 1: Analysis of insertion sort in terms of number of inversions
(related to hwk).

Insertion-sort works by sorting the first i-1 elements and then
inserting the ith element where it belongs among the first i-1.
Here is some C code:  (think of an array like [4, 2, 5, 3])

       void insertionsort(int a[], int n) {
           int i,j;
           
           for (i=1; i<n; i++) {
               for (j=i-1; j>=0; j--) {
                   if (a[j+1] >= a[j]) break;
                   swap(a,j,j+1); // swap these elements
               }
           }
       }

Let's look at running time in terms of the number of comparisons
between elements. (This is the number of times the code "a[j+1] >= a[j]" is
executed.)


(a) If the initial array consists of n elements in sorted order, how
many comparisons are made?    

Answer: If the array is already sorted, then we just make one
comparison for each i (breaking out of the loop).  So, the total
is n-1 comparisons.

(b) What if the array is in descending order?

Answer: In this case, the ith element will be compared to everything
smaller than it (the inner for-loop never breaks), for a total of i
comparisons.  So the total is n(n-1)/2. 

(c) More generally, call a pair of indices (i,j) an inversion if i<j
but a_i > a_j.   Show that the number of comparisons is always between
I and I + n-1.

Answer: There are a couple of ways to see this.  One is: each swap
reduces the number of inversions by *exactly* 1 [think about it].  For
each i, the number of comparisons is equal to, or one greater than,
the number of swaps (depending on whether we break out of the loop or
not).  So, the number of comparisons is between I and I + n-1.


Problem 2: BACKWARDS-ANALYSIS OF QUICKSORT.   Here's a kind of bizarre
way of analyzing quicksort: look at the algorithm backwards.  (This is
in the lecture notes). 

Actually, to do this analysis, it is better to think of a version of
Quicksort that instead of being recursive, at each step it picks a
random element of all the non-pivots so far, and then breaks up
whatever bucket that element happens to be in.  This is easiest to
think of if you imagine doing the sorting "in place" in the array.  If
you think about it, this way of thinking is just rearranging the order
in which the work happens, but it doesn't change the number of
comparisons done (I mean, you probably wouldn't want to implement the
algorithm this way because you'd have to keep track of which elements
are previous pivots etc).  Maybe do an example so that people are
comfortable with this version of the algorithm and that it really is
doing the same work but in a different order.

The reason this version is nice is that if you imagine watching
the pivots get chosen and where they would be on a sorted array, they
are coming in a completely random permutation.  Looking at the
algorithm run backwards, at a generic point in time, we have $k$
pivots (producing $k+1$ buckets) and we ``undo'' one of our pivot
choices at random, merging the two adjoining buckets.  (Remember, the
pivots are coming in a completely random order, so, viewed backwards,
the most recent pivot is equally likely to be any of the k.)  

Now, the cost for an undo operation is the sum of the sizes of the two
buckets joined (since this was the number of comparisons needed to
split them). Notice that for each undo operation, if you sum the costs
over all of the $k$ possible pivot choices, you count each bucket
twice (or just once if it is the leftmost or rightmost bucket) and get
a total of $< 2n$.  Since we are picking one of these $k$ possibilities at
random, the {\em expected} cost for this undo operation is at most $2n/k$.
So, adding up over all undo operations, we get $\sum_k 2n/k = 2n H_n$.

This is pretty slick, and not the sort of thing you'd think of trying
off the top of your head, but it turns out to be useful in
analyzing related algorithms in computational geometry.