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A kind of opposite of a sorting algorithm is a shuffling algorithm. These are fundamentally different because they require a source of random numbers. Shuffling can also be implemented by a sorting algorithm, namely by a random sort: assigning a random number to each element of the list and then sorting based on the random numbers.
Such a component or property is called a sort key. For example, the items are books, the sort key is the title, subject or author, and the order is alphabetical. A new sort key can be created from two or more sort keys by lexicographical order. The first is then called the primary sort key, the second the secondary sort key, etc.
Sorting a set of unlabelled weights by weight using only a balance scale requires a comparison sort algorithm. A comparison sort is a type of sorting algorithm that only reads the list elements through a single abstract comparison operation (often a "less than or equal to" operator or a three-way comparison) that determines which of two elements should occur first in the final sorted list.
Integer sorting algorithms are usually designed to work in either the pointer machine or random access machine models of computing. The main difference between these two models is in how memory may be addressed.
However, the fundamental difference between the two algorithms is that insertion sort scans backwards from the current key, while selection sort scans forwards. This results in selection sort making the first k elements the k smallest elements of the unsorted input, while in insertion sort they are simply the first k elements of the input.
Note that the final result of an insertion sort is optimum, i.e., a correctly sorted list. For many problems, online algorithms cannot match the performance of offline algorithms. If the ratio between the performance of an online algorithm and an optimal offline algorithm is bounded, the online algorithm is called competitive. [1]
A Merge sort breaks the data up into chunks, sorts the chunks by some other algorithm (maybe bubblesort or Quick sort) and then recombines the chunks two by two so that each recombined chunk is in order. This approach minimises the number or reads and writes of data-chunks from disk, and is a popular external sort method.
An algorithm is fundamentally a set of rules or defined procedures that is typically designed and used to solve a specific problem or a broad set of problems.. Broadly, algorithms define process(es), sets of rules, or methodologies that are to be followed in calculations, data processing, data mining, pattern recognition, automated reasoning or other problem-solving operations.