Why binary search is the fastest search

 dadf

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Type

One of the first thing a programmer learns is the various "types" that data can have.  Commonly-used types include things like strings, integers, and arrays.  Underneath the hood, all software data is, of course, composed of bits commonly represented by sequences of ones and zeros.  But typing gives structure to those bits, and not only allows programmers to understand and reason about the code they write (it makes more sense, for instance, to think of a string as letters or words rather than bits), but also prevents errors through creating restrictions on what certain types can and cannot do (for instance, you can add floating point numbers but you can't add arrays). There are two major axes along which typing varies: a language can be either strongly or weakly typed; and a language can be statically or dynamically typed.  You can loosely think of these, respectively, as a language's ability to prevent type errors, and when a language catches type errors. Static vs....
Read more

Big O Time

Image
Here's a great way to approximate the Big O time of your algorithm: just run it with differently sized inputs. That's right, that's all you have to do* (*there's more to it, we'll get to it in a sec).  You don't need to follow your inputs around, count any loops, look for best case and worse case scenarios.  You can get a pretty good approximation by following the steps below. 1.  Speed test your algorithm .  Make sure you have at least 3 inputs - if you're working with an array, make sure there's 3 elements, if you have a string make sure there's at least 3 letters, etc.  Larger inputs will make this test more accurate.  Note down how fast your algorithm was. 2. Double the number of inputs. 3. Speed test your algorithm again.  Got a number? Good. 4.  Now, divide the second speed test result by the first one. Once you've got that ratio, you're good to go!  Simply compare your ratio to the following chart: Ratio Big O time approximately 1 O(1)...
Read more

Ding!

The last time I used a typewriter was when I was a freshman in college.  I found an old typewriter in the library and used it to write letters to my cousin.  A fair amount of letters on the thing didn't work and I never remembered to send those letters - both fitting symbols for the place of the typewriter in modern society.  But, like that typewriter that probably still hangs out in a dingy corner of the library, the mechanico-social conventions surrounding typewriters also limp on: enter the bell alert. Try copy and pasting either of these bits of code into a new program file and running it in your console: ring-a-ding.rb puts `clear` puts "Press enter to ring the bell!" x = "" while x != "bye" x = gets . chomp puts " \a " end bellz.js let i = 0 while ( i < 5 ){ console . log ( ' \u0007 ' ) i ++ } Music! (...well, sound at least) The Ruby escape character "\a" and the Uni...
Read more