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algorithmsortingbig-otime-complexityselection-sort

Calculating the big-O complexity of this selection sort implementation?


I'm trying to compute the big-O time complexity of this selection sort implementation:

void selectionsort(int a[], int n)                    
{
    int i, j, minimum, index;                       
    for(i=0; i<(n-1); i++)                       
    {
        minimum=a[n-1];                      
        index=(n-1);                             
        for(j=i; j<(n-1); j++)                   
        {
            if(a[j]<minimum)                     
            {
                minimum=a[j];                               
                index=j;
            }
        }
        if (i != index)
        {
            a[index]=a[i];
            a[i]=minimum;
        }
    }
}    

How might I go about doing this?


Solution

  • Formally, you can obtain the exact number of iterations with the order of growth using the methodology below:

    enter image description here

    Executing the following fragment code (synthetic version of the original code), sum will equal the closed form of T(n).

    sum = 0;
    for( i = 0 ;  i < ( n - 1 ) ; i ++ ) {    
        for( j = i ; j < ( n - 1 ) ; j ++ ) {
            sum ++;
        }
    }