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Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition Thomas H. Cormen Charles E. Leiserson Ronald L. Rivest Clifford Stein The MIT Press Cambridge , Massachusetts London, England McGraw-Hill Book Company Boston Burr Ridge , IL Dubuque , IA Madison , WI New York San Francisco St. Louis Montreal Toronto This book is one of a series of texts written by faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was edited and produced by The MIT Press under a joint production-distribution agreement with the McGraw-Hill Book Company.
Ordering Information: North America Text orders should be addressed to the McGraw-Hill Book Company. All other orders should be addressed to The MIT Press. Outside North America All orders should be addressed to The MIT Press or its local distributor. Copyright © 2001 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology First edition 1990 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Introduction to algorithms / Thomas H. Cormen … [et al. ]. -2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-03293-7 (hc. : alk. paper, MIT Press). -ISBN 0-07-013151-1 (McGraw-Hill) 1. Computer programming. 2. Computer algorithms. I. Title: Algorithms. II. Cormen, Thomas H. QA76. 6 I5858 2001 005. 1-dc21 2001031277 Preface This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the modern study of computer algorithms.
It presents many algorithms and covers them in considerable depth, yet makes their design and analysis accessible to all levels of readers. We have tried to keep explanations elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor. Each chapter presents an algorithm, a design technique, an application area, or a related topic. Algorithms are described in English and in a “pseudocode” designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The book contains over 230 figures illustrating how the algorithms work.
Since we emphasize efficiency as a design criterion, we include careful analyses of the running times of all our algorithms. The text is intended primarily for use in undergraduate or graduate courses in algorithms or data structures. Because it discusses engineering issues in algorithm design, as well as mathematical aspects, it is equally well suited for self-study by technical professionals. In this, the second edition, we have updated the entire book. The changes range from the addition of new chapters to the rewriting of individual sentences. To the teacher This book is designed to be both versatile and complete.
You will find it useful for a variety of courses, from an undergraduate course in data structures up through a graduate course in algorithms. Because we have provided considerably more material than can fit in a typical one-term course, you should think of the book as a “buffet” or “smorgasbord” from which you can pick and choose the material that best supports the course you wish to teach. You should find it easy to organize your course around just the chapters you need. We have made chapters relatively self-contained, so that you need not worry about an unexpected and unnecessary dependence of one chapter on another.
Each chapter presents the easier material first and the more difficult material later, with section boundaries marking natural stopping points. In an undergraduate course, you might use only the earlier sections from a chapter; in a graduate course, you might cover the entire chapter. We have included over 920 exercises and over 140 problems. Each section ends with exercises, and each chapter ends with problems. The exercises are generally short questions that test basic mastery of the material. Some are simple self-check thought exercises, whereas others are more substantial and are suitable as assigned homework.
The problems are more elaborate case studies that often introduce new material; they typically consist of several questions that lead the student through the steps required to arrive at a solution. We have starred (? ) the sections and exercises that are more suitable for graduate students than for undergraduates. A starred section is not necessarily more difficult than an unstarred one, but it may require an understanding of more advanced mathematics. Likewise, starred exercises may require an advanced background or more than average creativity. To the student
We hope that this textbook provides you with an enjoyable introduction to the field of algorithms. We have attempted to make every algorithm accessible and interesting. To help you when you encounter unfamiliar or difficult algorithms, we describe each one in a step-bystep manner. We also provide careful explanations of the mathematics needed to understand the analysis of the algorithms. If you already have some familiarity with a topic, you will find the chapters organized so that you can skim introductory sections and proceed quickly to the more advanced material.
This is a large book, and your class will probably cover only a portion of its material. We have tried, however, to make this a book that will be useful to you now as a course textbook and also later in your career as a mathematical desk reference or an engineering handbook. What are the prerequisites for reading this book? • • You should have some programming experience. In particular, you should understand recursive procedures and simple data structures such as arrays and linked lists. You should have some facility with proofs by mathematical induction. A few portions of the book rely on some knowledge of elementary calculus.
Beyond that, Parts I and VIII of this book teach you all the mathematical techniques you will need. To the professional The wide range of topics in this book makes it an excellent handbook on algorithms. Because each chapter is relatively self-contained, you can focus in on the topics that most interest you. Most of the algorithms we discuss have great practical utility. We therefore address implementation concerns and other engineering issues. We often provide practical alternatives to the few algorithms that are primarily of theoretical interest. If you wish to mplement any of the algorithms, you will find the translation of our pseudocode into your favorite programming language a fairly straightforward task. The pseudocode is designed to present each algorithm clearly and succinctly. Consequently, we do not address error-handling and other software-engineering issues that require specific assumptions about your programming environment. We attempt to present each algorithm simply and directly without allowing the idiosyncrasies of a particular programming language to obscure its essence. To our colleagues We have supplied an extensive bibliography and pointers to the current literature.
Each chapter ends with a set of “chapter notes” that give historical details and references. The chapter notes do not provide a complete reference to the whole field of algorithms, however. Though it may be hard to believe for a book of this size, many interesting algorithms could not be included due to lack of space. Despite myriad requests from students for solutions to problems and exercises, we have chosen as a matter of policy not to supply references for problems and exercises, to remove the temptation for students to look up a solution rather than to find it themselves. Changes for the second edition
What has changed between the first and second editions of this book? Depending on how you look at it, either not much or quite a bit. A quick look at the table of contents shows that most of the first-edition chapters and sections appear in the second edition. We removed two chapters and a handful of sections, but we have added three new chapters and four new sections apart from these new chapters. If you were to judge the scope of the changes by the table of contents, you would likely conclude that the changes were modest. The changes go far beyond what shows up in the table of contents, however.
In no particular order, here is a summary of the most significant changes for the second edition: • • • • • • • • • Cliff Stein was added as a coauthor. Errors have been corrected. How many errors? Let’s just say several. There are three new chapters: o Chapter 1 discusses the role of algorithms in computing. o Chapter 5 covers probabilistic analysis and randomized algorithms. As in the first edition, these topics appear throughout the book. o Chapter 29 is devoted to linear programming. Within chapters that were carried over from the first edition, there are new sections on the following topics: o perfect hashing (Section 11. ), o two applications of dynamic programming (Sections 15. 1 and 15. 5), and o approximation algorithms that use randomization and linear programming (Section 35. 4). To allow more algorithms to appear earlier in the book, three of the chapters on mathematical background have been moved from Part I to the Appendix, which is Part VIII. There are over 40 new problems and over 185 new exercises. We have made explicit the use of loop invariants for proving correctness. Our first loop invariant appears in Chapter 2, and we use them a couple of dozen times throughout the book. Many of the probabilistic analyses have been rewritten.
In particular, we use in a dozen places the technique of “indicator random variables,” which simplify probabilistic analyses, especially when random variables are dependent. We have expanded and updated the chapter notes and bibliography. The bibliography has grown by over 50%, and we have mentioned many new algorithmic results that have appeared subsequent to the printing of the first edition. We have also made the following changes: • The chapter on solving recurrences no longer contains the iteration method. Instead, in Section 4. 2, we have “promoted” recursion trees to constitute a method in their own right.
We have found that drawing out recursion trees is less error-prone than iterating • • • • • • • • recurrences. We do point out, however, that recursion trees are best used as a way to generate guesses that are then verified via the substitution method. The partitioning method used for quicksort (Section 7. 1) and the expected linear-time order-statistic algorithm (Section 9. 2) is different. We now use the method developed by Lomuto, which, along with indicator random variables, allows for a somewhat simpler analysis. The method from the first edition, due to Hoare, appears as a problem in Chapter 7.
We have modified the discussion of universal hashing in Section 11. 3. 3 so that it integrates into the presentation of perfect hashing. There is a much simpler analysis of the height of a randomly built binary search tree in Section 12. 4. The discussions on the elements of dynamic programming (Section 15. 3) and the elements of greedy algorithms (Section 16. 2) are significantly expanded. The exploration of the activity-selection problem, which starts off the greedy-algorithms chapter, helps to clarify the relationship between dynamic programming and greedy algorithms.
We have replaced the proof of the running time of the disjoint-set-union data structure in Section 21. 4 with a proof that uses the potential method to derive a tight bound. The proof of correctness of the algorithm for strongly connected components in Section 22. 5 is simpler, clearer, and more direct. Chapter 24, on single-source shortest paths, has been reorganized to move proofs of the essential properties to their own section. The new organization allows us to focus earlier on algorithms. Section 34. 5 contains an expanded overview of NP-completeness as well as new NPcompleteness proofs for the hamiltonian-cycle and subset-sum problems.
Finally, virtually every section has been edited to correct, simplify, and clarify explanations and proofs. Web site Another change from the first edition is that this book now has its own web site: http://mitpress. mit. edu/algorithms/. You can use the web site to report errors, obtain a list of known errors, or make suggestions; we would like to hear from you. We particularly welcome ideas for new exercises and problems, but please include solutions. We regret that we cannot personally respond to all comments. Acknowledgments for the first edition Many friends and colleagues have contributed greatly to the quality of this book.
We thank all of you for your help and constructive criticisms. MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science has provided an ideal working environment. Our colleagues in the laboratory’s Theory of Computation Group have been particularly supportive and tolerant of our incessant requests for critical appraisal of chapters. We specifically thank Baruch Awerbuch, Shafi Goldwasser, Leo Guibas, Tom Leighton, Albert Meyer, David Shmoys, and Eva Tardos. Thanks to William Ang, Sally Bemus, Ray Hirschfeld, and Mark Reinhold for keeping our machines (DEC Microvaxes, Apple Macintoshes, and Sun
Sparcstations) running and for recompiling whenever we exceeded a compile-time limit. Thinking Machines Corporation provided partial support for Charles Leiserson to work on this book during a leave of absence from MIT. Many colleagues have used drafts of this text in courses at other schools. They have suggested numerous corrections and revisions. We particularly wish to thank Richard Beigel, Andrew Goldberg, Joan Lucas, Mark Overmars, Alan Sherman, and Diane Souvaine. Many teaching assistants in our courses have made significant contributions to the development of this material.
We especially thank Alan Baratz, Bonnie Berger, Aditi Dhagat, Burt Kaliski, Arthur Lent, Andrew Moulton, Marios Papaefthymiou, Cindy Phillips, Mark Reinhold, Phil Rogaway, Flavio Rose, Arie Rudich, Alan Sherman, Cliff Stein, Susmita Sur, Gregory Troxel, and Margaret Tuttle. Additional valuable technical assistance was provided by many individuals. Denise Sergent spent many hours in the MIT libraries researching bibliographic references. Maria Sensale, the librarian of our reading room, was always cheerful and helpful. Access to Albert Meyer’s personal library saved many hours of library time in preparing the chapter notes.
Shlomo Kipnis, Bill Niehaus, and David Wilson proofread old exercises, developed new ones, and wrote notes on their solutions. Marios Papaefthymiou and Gregory Troxel contributed to the indexing. Over the years, our secretaries Inna Radzihovsky, Denise Sergent, Gayle Sherman, and especially Be Blackburn provided endless support in this project, for which we thank them. Many errors in the early drafts were reported by students. We particularly thank Bobby Blumofe, Bonnie Eisenberg, Raymond Johnson, John Keen, Richard Lethin, Mark Lillibridge, John Pezaris, Steve Ponzio, and Margaret Tuttle for their careful readings.
Colleagues have also provided critical reviews of specific chapters, or information on specific algorithms, for which we are grateful. We especially thank Bill Aiello, Alok Aggarwal, Eric Bach, Vasek Chvatal, Richard Cole, Johan Hastad, Alex Ishii, David Johnson, Joe Kilian, Dina Kravets, Bruce Maggs, Jim Orlin, James Park, Thane Plambeck, Hershel Safer, Jeff Shallit, Cliff Stein, Gil Strang, Bob Tarjan, and Paul Wang. Several of our colleagues also graciously supplied us with problems; we particularly thank Andrew Goldberg, Danny Sleator, and Umesh Vazirani.
It has been a pleasure working with The MIT Press and McGraw-Hill in the development of this text. We especially thank Frank Satlow, Terry Ehling, Larry Cohen, and Lorrie Lejeune of The MIT Press and David Shapiro of McGraw-Hill for their encouragement, support, and patience. We are particularly grateful to Larry Cohen for his outstanding copyediting. Acknowledgments for the second edition When we asked Julie Sussman, P. P. A. , to serve as a technical copyeditor for the second edition, we did not know what a good deal we were getting. In addition to copyediting the technical content, Julie enthusiastically edited our prose.
It is humbling to think of how many errors Julie found in our earlier drafts, though considering how many errors she found in the first edition (after it was printed, unfortunately), it is not surprising. Moreover, Julie sacrificed her own schedule to accommodate ours-she even brought chapters with her on a trip to the Virgin Islands! Julie, we cannot thank you enough for the amazing job you did. The work for the second edition was done while the authors were members of the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College and the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT.
Both were stimulating environments in which to work, and we thank our colleagues for their support. Friends and colleagues all over the world have provided suggestions and opinions that guided our writing. Many thanks to Sanjeev Arora, Javed Aslam, Guy Blelloch, Avrim Blum, Scot Drysdale, Hany Farid, Hal Gabow, Andrew Goldberg, David Johnson, Yanlin Liu, Nicolas Schabanel, Alexander Schrijver, Sasha Shen, David Shmoys, Dan Spielman, Gerald Jay Sussman, Bob Tarjan, Mikkel Thorup, and Vijay Vazirani.
Many teachers and colleagues have taught us a great deal about algorithms. We particularly acknowledge our teachers Jon L. Bentley, Bob Floyd, Don Knuth, Harold Kuhn, H. T. Kung, Richard Lipton, Arnold Ross, Larry Snyder, Michael I. Shamos, David Shmoys, Ken Steiglitz, Tom Szymanski, Eva Tardos, Bob Tarjan, and Jeffrey Ullman. We acknowledge the work of the many teaching assistants for the algorithms courses at MIT and Dartmouth, including Joseph Adler, Craig Barrack, Bobby Blumofe, Roberto De Prisco, Matteo Frigo, Igal Galperin, David Gupta, Raj D.
Iyer, Nabil Kahale, Sarfraz Khurshid, Stavros Kolliopoulos, Alain Leblanc, Yuan Ma, Maria Minkoff, Dimitris Mitsouras, Alin Popescu, Harald Prokop, Sudipta Sengupta, Donna Slonim, Joshua A. Tauber, Sivan Toledo, Elisheva Werner-Reiss, Lea Wittie, Qiang Wu, and Michael Zhang. Computer support was provided by William Ang, Scott Blomquist, and Greg Shomo at MIT and by Wayne Cripps, John Konkle, and Tim Tregubov at Dartmouth.
Thanks also to Be Blackburn, Don Dailey, Leigh Deacon, Irene Sebeda, and Cheryl Patton Wu at MIT and to Phyllis Bellmore, Kelly Clark, Delia Mauceli, Sammie Travis, Deb Whiting, and Beth Young at Dartmouth for administrative support. Michael Fromberger, Brian Campbell, Amanda Eubanks, Sung Hoon Kim, and Neha Narula also provided timely support at Dartmouth. Many people were kind enough to report errors in the first edition. We thank the following people, each of whom was the first to report an error from the first edition: Len Adleman, Selim Akl, Richard Anderson,
Juan Andrade-Cetto, Gregory Bachelis, David Barrington, Paul Beame, Richard Beigel, Margrit Betke, Alex Blakemore, Bobby Blumofe, Alexander Brown, Xavier Cazin, Jack Chan, Richard Chang, Chienhua Chen, Ien Cheng, Hoon Choi, Drue Coles, Christian Collberg, George Collins, Eric Conrad, Peter Csaszar, Paul Dietz, Martin Dietzfelbinger, Scot Drysdale, Patricia Ealy, Yaakov Eisenberg, Michael Ernst, Michael Formann, Nedim Fresko, Hal Gabow, Marek Galecki, Igal Galperin, Luisa Gargano, John Gately, Rosario Genario, Mihaly Gereb, Ronald Greenberg, Jerry Grossman, Stephen Guattery, Alexander Hartemik, Anthony Hill, Thomas Hofmeister, Mathew Hostetter, YihChun Hu, Dick Johnsonbaugh, Marcin Jurdzinki, Nabil Kahale, Fumiaki Kamiya, Anand Kanagala, Mark Kantrowitz, Scott Karlin, Dean Kelley, Sanjay Khanna, Haluk Konuk, Dina Kravets, Jon Kroger, Bradley Kuszmaul, Tim Lambert, Hang Lau, Thomas Lengauer, George Madrid, Bruce Maggs, Victor Miller, Joseph Muskat, Tung Nguyen, Michael Orlov, James Park, Seongbin Park, Ioannis Paschalidis, Boaz Patt-Shamir, Leonid Peshkin, Patricio Poblete, Ira Pohl, Stephen Ponzio, Kjell Post, Todd Poynor, Colin Prepscius, Sholom Rosen, Dale Russell, Hershel Safer, Karen Seidel, Joel Seiferas, Erik Seligman, Stanley Selkow, Jeffrey Shallit, Greg Shannon, Micha Sharir, Sasha Shen, Norman Shulman, Andrew Singer, Daniel Sleator, Bob Sloan, Michael Sofka, Volker Strumpen, Lon Sunshine, Julie Sussman, Asterio Tanaka, Clark Thomborson, Nils Thommesen, Homer Tilton, Martin Tompa, Andrei Toom, Felzer Torsten, Hirendu Vaishnav, M.
Veldhorst, Luca Venuti, Jian Wang, Michael Wellman, Gerry Wiener, Ronald Williams, David Wolfe, Jeff Wong, Richard Woundy, Neal Young, Huaiyuan Yu, Tian Yuxing, Joe Zachary, Steve Zhang, Florian Zschoke, and Uri Zwick. Many of our colleagues provided thoughtful reviews or filled out a long survey. We thank reviewers Nancy Amato, Jim Aspnes, Kevin Compton, William Evans, Peter Gacs, Michael Goldwasser, Andrzej Proskurowski, Vijaya Ramachandran, and John Reif. We also thank the following people for sending back the survey: James Abello, Josh Benaloh, Bryan BeresfordSmith, Kenneth Blaha, Hans Bodlaender, Richard Borie, Ted Brown, Domenico Cantone, M.
Chen, Robert Cimikowski, William Clocksin, Paul Cull, Rick Decker, Matthew Dickerson, Robert Douglas, Margaret Fleck, Michael Goodrich, Susanne Hambrusch, Dean Hendrix, Richard Johnsonbaugh, Kyriakos Kalorkoti, Srinivas Kankanahalli, Hikyoo Koh, Steven Lindell, Errol Lloyd, Andy Lopez, Dian Rae Lopez, George Lucker, David Maier, Charles Martel, Xiannong Meng, David Mount, Alberto Policriti, Andrzej Proskurowski, Kirk Pruhs, Yves Robert, Guna Seetharaman, Stanley Selkow, Robert Sloan, Charles Steele, Gerard Tel, Murali Varanasi, Bernd Walter, and Alden Wright. We wish we could have carried out all your suggestions. The only problem is that if we had, the second edition would have been about 3000 pages long! The second edition was produced in .
Michael Downes converted the macros from “classic” to , and he converted the text files to use these new macros. David Jones support. Figures for the second edition were produced by the authors also provided using MacDraw Pro. As in the first edition, the index was compiled using Windex, a C program written by the authors, and the bibliography was prepared using . Ayorkor Mills-Tettey and Rob Leathern helped convert the figures to MacDraw Pro, and Ayorkor also checked our bibliography. As it was in the first edition, working with The MIT Press and McGraw-Hill has been a delight. Our editors, Bob Prior of The MIT Press and Betsy Jones of McGraw-Hill, put up with our antics and kept us going with carrots and sticks.
Finally, we thank our wives-Nicole Cormen, Gail Rivest, and Rebecca Ivry-our childrenRicky, William, and Debby Leiserson; Alex and Christopher Rivest; and Molly, Noah, and Benjamin Stein-and our parents-Renee and Perry Cormen, Jean and Mark Leiserson, Shirley and Lloyd Rivest, and Irene and Ira Stein-for their love and support during the writing of this book. The patience and encouragement of our families made this project possible. We affectionately dedicate this book to them. THOMAS H. CORMEN Hanover, New Hampshire CHARLES E. LEISERSON Cambridge, Massachusetts RONALD L. RIVEST Cambridge, Massachusetts CLIFFORD STEIN Hanover, New Hampshire May 2001 Part I: Foundations Chapter List
Chapter 1: The Role of Algorithms in Computing Chapter 2: Getting Started Chapter 3: Growth of Functions Chapter 4: Recurrences Chapter 5: Probabilistic Analysis and Randomized Algorithms Introduction This part will get you started in thinking about designing and analyzing algorithms. It is intended to be a gentle introduction to how we specify algorithms, some of the design strategies we will use throughout this book, and many of the fundamental ideas used in algorithm analysis. Later parts of this book will build upon this base. Chapter 1 is an overview of algorithms and their place in modern computing systems. This chapter defines what an algorithm is and lists some examples.
It also makes a case that algorithms are a technology, just as are fast hardware, graphical user interfaces, objectoriented systems, and networks. In Chapter 2, we see our first algorithms, which solve the problem of sorting a sequence of n numbers. They are written in a pseudocode which, although not directly translatable to any conventional programming language, conveys the structure of the algorithm clearly enough that a competent programmer can implement it in the language of his choice. The sorting algorithms we examine are insertion sort, which uses an incremental approach, and merge sort, which uses a recursive technique known as “divide and conquer. ” Although the time each requires increases with the value of n, the rate of increase differs between the two algorithms.
We determine these running times in Chapter 2, and we develop a useful notation to express them. Chapter 3 precisely defines this notation, which we call asymptotic notation. It starts by defining several asymptotic notations, which we use for bounding algorithm running times from above and/or below. The rest of Chapter 3 is primarily a presentation of mathematical notation. Its purpose is more to ensure that your use of notation matches that in this book than to teach you new mathematical concepts. Chapter 4 delves further into the divide-and-conquer method introduced in Chapter 2. In particular, Chapter 4 contains methods for solving recurrences, which are useful for describing the running times of recursive algorithms.
One powerful technique is the “master method,” which can be used to solve recurrences that arise from divide-and-conquer algorithms. Much of Chapter 4 is devoted to proving the correctness of the master method, though this proof may be skipped without harm. Chapter 5 introduces probabilistic analysis and randomized algorithms. We typically use probabilistic analysis to determine the running time of an algorithm in cases in which, due to the presence of an inherent probability distribution, the running time may differ on different inputs of the same size. In some cases, we assume that the inputs conform to a known probability distribution, so that we are averaging the running time over all possible inputs.
In other cases, the probability distribution comes not from the inputs but from random choices made during the course of the algorithm. An algorithm whose behavior is determined not only by its input but by the values produced by a random-number generator is a randomized algorithm. We can use randomized algorithms to enforce a probability distribution on the inputs-thereby ensuring that no particular input always causes poor performance-or even to bound the error rate of algorithms that are allowed to produce incorrect results on a limited basis. Appendices A-C contain other mathematical material that you will find helpful as you read this book.
You are likely to have seen much of the material in the appendix chapters before having read this book (although the specific notational conventions we use may differ in some cases from what you have seen in the past), and so you should think of the Appendices as reference material. On the other hand, you probably have not already seen most of the material in Part I. All the chapters in Part I and the Appendices are written with a tutorial flavor. Chapter 1: The Role of Algorithms in Computing What are algorithms? Why is the study of algorithms worthwhile? What is the role of algorithms relative to other technologies used in computers? In this chapter, we will answer these questions. 1. Algorithms Informally, an algorithm is any well-defined computational procedure that takes some value, or set of values, as input and produces some value, or set of values, as output. An algorithm is thus a sequence of computational steps that transform the input into the output. We can also view an algorithm as a tool for solving a well-specified computational problem. The statement of the problem specifies in general terms the desired input/output relationship. The algorithm describes a specific computational procedure for achieving that input/output relationship. For example, one might need to sort a sequence of numbers into nondecreasing order.
This problem arises frequently in practice and provides fertile ground for introducing many standard design techniques and analysis tools. Here is how we formally define the sorting problem: • • Input: A sequence of n numbers a1, a2, … , an . Output: A permutation (reordering) of the input sequence such that . For example, given the input sequence 31, 41, 59, 26, 41, 58 , a sorting algorithm returns as output the sequence 26, 31, 41, 41, 58, 59 . Such an input sequence is called an instance of the sorting problem. In general, an instance of a problem consists of the input (satisfying whatever constraints are imposed in the problem statement) needed to compute a solution to the problem.
Sorting is a fundamental operation in computer science (many programs use it as an intermediate step), and as a result a large number of good sorting algorithms have been developed. Which algorithm is best for a given application depends on-among other factorsthe number of items to be sorted, the extent to which the items are already somewhat sorted, possible restrictions on the item values, and the kind of storage device to be used: main memory, disks, or tapes. An algorithm is said to be correct if, for every input instance, it halts with the correct output. We say that a correct algorithm solves the given computational problem. An incorrect algorithm might not halt at all on some input instances, or it might halt with an answer other than the desired one.
Contrary to what one might expect, incorrect algorithms can sometimes be useful, if their error rate can be controlled. We shall see an example of this in Chapter 31 when we study algorithms for finding large prime numbers. Ordinarily, however, we shall be concerned only with correct algorithms. An algorithm can be specified in English, as a computer program, or even as a hardware design. The only requirement is that the specification must provide a precise description of the computational procedure to be followed. What kinds of problems are solved by algorithms? Sorting is by no means the only computational problem for which algorithms have been developed. (You probably suspected as much when you saw the size of this book. ) Practical pplications of algorithms are ubiquitous and include the following examples: • • • The Human Genome Project has the goals of identifying all the 100,000 genes in human DNA, determining the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, storing this information in databases, and developing tools for data analysis. Each of these steps requires sophisticated algorithms. While the solutions to the various problems involved are beyond the scope of this book, ideas from many of the chapters in this book are used in the solution of these biological problems, thereby enabling scientists to accomplish tasks while using resources efficiently.
The savings are in time, both human and machine, and in money, as more information can be extracted from laboratory techniques. The Internet enables people all around the world to quickly access and retrieve large amounts of information. In order to do so, clever algorithms are employed to manage and manipulate this large volume of data. Examples of problems which must be solved include finding good routes on which the data will travel (techniques for solving such problems appear in Chapter 24), and using a search engine to quickly find pages on which particular information resides (related techniques are in Chapters 11 and 32). Electronic commerce enables goods and services to be negotiated and exchanged electronically.
The ability to keep information such as credit card numbers, passwords, and bank statements private is essential if electronic commerce is to be used widely. • Public-key cryptography and digital signatures (covered in Chapter 31) are among the core technologies used and are based on numerical algorithms and number theory. In manufacturing and other commercial settings, it is often important to allocate scarce resources in the most beneficial way. An oil company may wish to know where to place its wells in order to maximize its expected profit. A candidate for the presidency of the United States may want to determine where to spend money buying campaign advertising in order to maximize the chances of winning an election.
An airline may wish to assign crews to flights in the least expensive way possible, making sure that each flight is covered and that government regulations regarding crew scheduling are met. An Internet service provider may wish to determine where to place additional resources in order to serve its customers more effectively. All of these are examples of problems that can be solved using linear programming, which we shall study in Chapter 29. While some of the details of these examples are beyond the scope of this book, we do give underlying techniques that apply to these problems and problem areas. We also show how to solve many concrete problems in this book, including the following: • • • •
We are given a road map on which the distance between each pair of adjacent intersections is marked, and our goal is to determine the shortest route from one intersection to another. The number of possible routes can be huge, even if we disallow routes that cross over themselves. How do we choose which of all possible routes is the shortest? Here, we model the road map (which is itself a model of the actual roads) as a graph (which we will meet in Chapter 10 and Appendix B), and we wish to find the shortest path from one vertex to another in the graph. We shall see how to solve this problem efficiently in Chapter 24. We are given a sequence A1, A2, … , An of n matrices, and we wish to determine their product A1 A2 An. Because matrix multiplication is associative, there are several legal multiplication orders.
For example, if n = 4, we could perform the matrix multiplications as if the product were parenthesized in any of the following orders: (A1(A2(A3A4))), (A1((A2A3)A4)), ((A1A2)(A3A4)), ((A1(A2A3))A4), or (((A1A2)A3)A4). If these matrices are all square (and hence the same size), the multiplication order will not affect how long the matrix multiplications take. If, however, these matrices are of differing sizes (yet their sizes are compatible for matrix multiplication), then the multiplication order can make a very big difference. The number of possible multiplication orders is exponential in n, and so trying all possible orders may take a very long time. We shall see in Chapter 15 how to use a general technique known as dynamic programming to solve this problem much more efficiently. We are given an equation ax ? (mod n), where a, b, and n are integers, and we wish to find all the integers x, modulo n, that satisfy the equation. There may be zero, one, or more than one such solution. We can simply try x = 0, 1, … , n – 1 in order, but Chapter 31 shows a more efficient method. We are given n points in the plane, and we wish to find the convex hull of these points. The convex hull is the smallest convex polygon containing the points. Intuitively, we can think of each point as being represented by a nail sticking out from a board. The convex hull would be represented by a tight rubber band that surrounds all the nails. Each nail around which the rubber band makes a turn is a vertex of the convex hull. (See Figure 33. 6 on page 948 for an example. Any of the 2n subsets of the points might be the vertices of the convex hull. Knowing which points are vertices of the convex hull is not quite enough, either, since we also need to know the order in which they appear. There are many choices, therefore, for the vertices of the convex hull. Chapter 33 gives two good methods for finding the convex hull. These lists are far from exhaustive (as you again have probably surmised from this book’s heft), but exhibit two characteristics that are common to many interesting algorithms. 1. There are many candidate solutions, most of which are not what we want. Finding one that we do want can present quite a challenge. 2. There are practical applications.
Of the problems in the above list, shortest paths provides the easiest examples. A transportation firm, such as a trucking or railroad company, has a financial interest in finding shortest paths through a road or rail network because taking shorter paths results in lower labor and fuel costs. Or a routing node on the Internet may need to find the shortest path through the network in order to route a message quickly. Data structures This book also contains several data structures. A data structure is a way to store and organize data in order to facilitate access and modifications. No single data structure works well for all purposes, and so it is important to know the strengths and limitations of several of them.
Technique Although you can use this book as a “cookbook” for algorithms, you may someday encounter a problem for which you cannot readily find a published algorithm (many of the exercises and problems in this book, for example! ). This book will teach you techniques of algorithm design and analysis so that you can develop algorithms on your own, show that they give the correct answer, and understand their efficiency. Hard problems Most of this book is about efficient algorithms. Our usual measure of efficiency is speed, i. e. , how long an algorithm takes to produce its result. There are some problems, however, for which no efficient solution is known. Chapter 34 studies an interesting subset of these problems, which are known as NP-complete. Why are NP-complete problems interesting?
First, although no efficient algorithm for an NPcomplete problem has ever been found, nobody has ever proven that an efficient algorithm for one cannot exist. In other words, it is unknown whether or not efficient algorithms exist for NP-complete problems. Second, the set of NP-complete problems has the remarkable property that if an efficient algorithm exists for any one of them, then efficient algorithms exist for all of them. This relationship among the NP-complete problems makes the lack of efficient solutions all the more tantalizing. Third, several NP-complete problems are similar, but not identical, to problems for which we do know of efficient algorithms. A small change to the problem statement can cause a big change to the efficiency of the best known algorithm.
It is valuable to know about NP-complete problems because some of them arise surprisingly often in real applications. If you are called upon to produce an efficient algorithm for an NPcomplete problem, you are likely to spend a lot of time in a fruitless search. If you can show that the problem is NP-complete, you can instead spend your time developing an efficient algorithm that gives a good, but not the best possible, solution. As a concrete example, consider a trucking company with a central warehouse. Each day, it loads up the truck at the warehouse and sends it around to several locations to make deliveries. At the end of the day, the truck must end up back at the warehouse so that it is ready to be loaded for the next day.
To reduce costs, the company wants to select an order of delivery stops that yields the lowest overall distance traveled by the truck. This problem is the well-known “traveling-salesman problem,” and it is NP-complete. It has no known efficient algorithm. Under certain assumptions, however, there are efficient algorithms that give an overall distance that is not too far above the smallest possible. Chapter 35 discusses such “approximation algorithms. ” Exercises 1. 1-1 Give a real-world example in which one of the following computational problems appears: sorting, determining the best order for multiplying matrices, or finding the convex hull. Exercises 1. 1-2 Other than speed, what other measures of efficiency might one use in a real-world setting? Exercises 1. -3 Select a data structure that you have seen previously, and discuss its strengths and limitations. Exercises 1. 1-4 How are the shortest-path and traveling-salesman problems given above similar? How are they different? Exercises 1. 1-5 Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is “approximately” the best is good enough. 1. 2 Algorithms as a technology Suppose computers were infinitely fast and computer memory was free. Would you have any reason to study algorithms? The answer is yes, if for no other reason than that you would still like to demonstrate that your solution method terminates and does so with the correct answer.
If computers were infinitely fast, any correct method for solving a problem would do. You would probably want your implementation to be within the bounds of good software engineering practice (i. e. , well designed and documented), but you would most often use whichever method was the easiest to implement. Of course, computers may be fast, but they are not infinitely fast. And memory may be cheap, but it is not free. Computing time is therefore a bounded resource, and so is space in memory. These resources should be used wisely, and algorithms that are efficient in terms of time or space will help you do so. Efficiency Algorithms devised to solve the same problem often differ dramatically in their efficiency.
These differences can be much more significant than differences due to hardware and software. As an example, in Chapter 2, we will see two algorithms for sorting. The first, known as insertion sort, takes time roughly equal to c1n2 to sort n items, where c1 is a constant that does not depend on n. That is, it takes time roughly proportional to n2. The second, merge sort, takes time roughly equal to c2n lg n, where lg n stands for log2 n and c2 is another constant that also does not depend on n. Insertion sort usually has a smaller constant factor than merge sort, so that c1 ; c2. We shall see that the constant factors can be far less significant in the running time than the dependence on the input size n.
Where merge sort has a factor of lg n in its running time, insertion sort has a factor of n, which is much larger. Although insertion sort is usually faster than merge sort for small input sizes, once the input size n becomes large enough, merge sort’s advantage of lg n vs. n will more than compensate for the difference in constant factors. No matter how much smaller c1 is than c2, there will always be a crossover point beyond which merge sort is faster. For a concrete example, let us pit a faster computer (computer A) running insertion sort against a slower computer (computer B) running merge sort. They each must sort an array of one million numbers.
Suppose that computer A executes one billion instructions per second and computer B executes only ten million instructions per second, so that computer A is 100 times faster than computer B in raw computing power. To make the difference even more dramatic, suppose that the world’s craftiest programmer codes insertion sort in machine language for computer A, and the resulting code requires 2n2 instructions to sort n numbers. (Here, c1 = 2. ) Merge sort, on the other hand, is programmed for computer B by an average programmer using a high-level language with an inefficient compiler, with the resulting code taking 50n lg n instructions (so that c2 = 50). To sort one million numbers, computer A takes while computer B takes
By using an algorithm whose running time grows more slowly, even with a poor compiler, computer B runs 20 times faster than computer A! The advantage of merge sort is even more pronounced when we sort ten million numbers: where insertion sort takes approximately 2. 3 days, merge sort takes under 20 minutes. In general, as the problem size increases, so does the relative advantage of merge sort. Algorithms and other technologies The example above shows that algorithms, like computer hardware, are a technology. Total system performance depends on choosing efficient algorithms as much as on choosing fast hardware. Just as rapid advances are being made in other computer technologies, they are being made in algorithms as well.
You might wonder whether algorithms are truly that important on contemporary computers in light of other advanced technologies, such as • • • • hardware with high clock rates, pipelining, and superscalar architectures, easy-to-use, intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs), object-oriented systems, and local-area and wide-area networking. The answer is yes. Although there are some applications that do not explicitly require algorithmic content at the application level (e. g. , some simple web-based applications), most also require a degree of algorithmic content on their own. For example, consider a web-based service that determines how to travel from one location to another. (Several such services existed at the time of this writing. Its implementation would rely on fast hardware, a graphical user interface, wide-area networking, and also possibly on object orientation. However, it would also require algorithms for certain operations, such as finding routes (probably using a shortest-path algorithm), rendering maps, and interpolating addresses. Moreover, even an application that does not require algorithmic content at the application level relies heavily upon algorithms. Does the application rely on fast hardware? The hardware design used algorithms. Does the application rely on graphical user interfaces? The design of any GUI relies on algorithms. Does the application rely on networking? Routing in networks relies heavily on algorithms. Was the application written in a language other than machine code?
Then it was processed by a compiler, interpreter, or assembler, all of which make extensive use of algorithms. Algorithms are at the core of most technologies used in contemporary computers. Furthermore, with the ever-increasing capacities of computers, we use them to solve larger problems than ever before. As we saw in the above comparison between insertion sort and merge sort, it is at larger problem sizes that the differences in efficiencies between algorithms become particularly prominent. Having a solid base of algorithmic knowledge and technique is one characteristic that separates the truly skilled programmers from the novices. With modern computing echnology, you can accomplish some tasks without knowing much about algorithms, but with a good background in algorithms, you can do much, much more. Exercises 1. 2-1 Give an example of an application that requires algorithmic content at the application level, and discuss the function of the algorithms involved. Exercises 1. 2-2 Suppose we are comparing implementations of insertion sort and merge sort on the same machine. For inputs of size n, insertion sort runs in 8n2 steps, while merge sort runs in 64n lg n steps. For which values of n does insertion sort beat merge sort? Exercises 1. 2-3 What is the smallest value of n such that an algorithm whose running time is 100n2 runs faster than an algorithm whose running time is 2n on the same machine?
Problems 1-1: Comparison of running times For each function f(n) and time t in the following table, determine the largest size n of a problem that can be solved in time t, assuming that the algorithm to solve the problem takes f(n) microseconds. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 second minute hour day month year century lg n n n lg n n2 n3 2n n! Chapter notes There are many excellent texts on the general topic of algorithms, including those by Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman [5, 6], Baase and Van Gelder [26], Brassard and Bratley [46, 47], Goodrich and Tamassia [128], Horowitz, Sahni, and Rajasekaran [158], Kingston [179], Knuth [182, 183, 185], Kozen [193], Manber [210], Mehlhorn [217, 218, 219], Purdom and Brown [252], Reingold, Nievergelt, and Deo [257], Sedgewick [269], Skiena [280], and Wilf [315]. Some of the more practical aspects of algorithm design are discussed by Bentley [39, 40] and Gonnet [126].
Surveys of the field of algorithms can also be found in the Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume A [302] and the CRC Handbook on Algorithms and Theory of Computation [24]. Overviews of the algorithms used in computational biology can be found in textbooks by Gusfield [136], Pevzner [240], Setubal and Medinas [272], and Waterman [309]. Chapter 2: Getting Started This chapter will familiarize you with the framework we shall use throughout the book to think about the design and analysis of algorithms. It is self-contained, but it does include several references to material that will be introduced in Chapters 3 and 4. (It also contains several summations, which Appendix A shows how to solve. We begin by examining the insertion sort algorithm to solve the sorting problem introduced in Chapter 1. We define a “pseudocode” that should be familiar to readers who have done computer programming and use it to show how we shall specify our algorithms. Having specified the algorithm, we then argue that it correctly sorts and we analyze its running time. The analysis introduces a notation that focuses on how that time increases with the number of items to be sorted. Following our discussion of insertion sort, we introduce the divide-andconquer approach to the design of algorithms and use it to develop an algorithm called merge sort. We end with an analysis of merge sort’s running time. 2. 1 Insertion sort
Our first algorithm, insertion sort, solves the sorting problem introduced in Chapter 1: • • Input: A sequence of n numbers a1, a2, . . . ,an . Output: A permutation (reordering) of the input sequence such that . The numbers that we wish to sort are also known as the keys. In this book, we shall typically describe algorithms as programs written in a pseudocode that is similar in many respects to C, Pascal, or Java. If you have been introduced to any of these languages, you should have little trouble reading our algorithms. What separates pseudocode from “real” code is that in pseudocode, we employ whatever expressive method is most clear and concise to specify a given algorithm.
Sometimes, the clearest method is English, so do not be surprised if you come across an English phrase or sentence embedded within a section of “real” code. Another difference between pseudocode and real code is that pseudocode is not typically concerned with issues of software engineering. Issues of data abstraction, modularity, and error handling are often ignored in order to convey the essence of the algorithm more concisely. We start with insertion sort, which is an efficient algorithm for sorting a small number of elements. Insertion sort works the way many people sort a hand of playing cards. We start with an empty left hand and the cards face down on the table.
We then remove one card at a time from the table and insert it into the correct position in the left hand. To find the correct position for a card, we compare it with each of the cards already in the hand, from right to left, as illustrated in Figure 2. 1. At all times, the cards held in the left hand are sorted, and these cards were originally the top cards of the pile on the table. Figure 2. 1: Sorting a hand of cards using insertion sort. Our pseudocode for insertion sort is presented as a procedure called INSERTION-SORT, which takes as a parameter an array A[1 n] containing a sequence of length n that is to be sorted. (In the code, the number n of elements in A is denoted by length[A]. The input numbers are sorted in place: the numbers are rearranged within the array A, with at most a constant number of them stored outside the array at any time. The input array A contains the sorted output sequence when INSERTION-SORT is finished. INSERTION-SORT(A) 1 for j A[1 i Loop invariants and the correctness of insertion sort Figure 2. 2 shows how this algorithm works for A = 5, 2, 4, 6, 1, 3 . The index j indicates the "current card” being inserted into the hand. At the beginning of each iteration of the "outer” for loop, which is indexed by j, the subarray consisting of elements A[1 j – 1] constitute the currently sorted hand, and elements A[j +[j + 1 n]respond to the pile of cards still on the table.
In fact, elements A[1 j[1 j – 1] the elements originally in positions 1 through j – 1, but now in sorted order. We state these properties of A[1 j[1 j -1]mally as a loop invariant: • At the start of each iteration of the for loop of lines 1-8, the subarray A[1 c[1 consists of the elements originally in A[1 j – 1] in sorted order. j – 1] Figure 2. 2: The operation of INSERTION-SORT on the array A = 5, 2, 4, 6, 1, 3 . Array indices appear above the rectangles, and values stored in the array positions appear within the rectangles. (a)-(e) The iterations of the for loop of lines 1-8. In each iteration, the black rectangle holds the key taken from A[j],[j]ich is compared with the values in shaded rectangles to its left in the test of line 5.
Shaded arrows show array values moved one position to the right in line 6, and black arrows indicate where the key is moved to in line 8. (f) The final sorted array. We use loop invariants to help us understand why an algorithm is correct. We must show three things about a loop invariant: • • • Initialization: It is true prior to the first iteration of the loop. Maintenance: If it is true before an iteration of the loop, it remains true before the next iteration. Termination: When the loop terminates, the invariant gives us a useful property that helps show that the algorithm is correct. When the first two properties hold, the loop invariant is true prior to every iteration of the loop.
Note the similarity to mathematical induction, where to prove that a property holds, you prove a base case and an inductive step. Here, showing that the invariant holds before the first iteration is like the base case, and showing that the invariant holds from iteration to iteration is like the inductive step. The third property is perhaps the most important one, since we are using the loop invariant to show correctness. It also differs from the usual use of mathematical induction, in which the inductive step is used infinitely; here, we stop the “induction” when the loop terminates. Let us see how these properties hold for insertion sort. • •
Initialization: We start by showing that the loop invariant holds before the first loop iteration, when j = 2. [1] [1] subarray A[1 j[1 j – 1]erefore, consists of just the single element A[1],[1]ich is in fact the original element in A[1].[1]reover, this subarray is sorted (trivially, of course), which shows that the loop invariant holds prior to the first iteration of the loop. Maintenance: Next, we tackle the second property: showing that each iteration maintains the loop invariant. Informally, the body of the outer for loop works by moving A[ j [ j – 1] j [ j – 2] j [ j – 3]d so on by one position to the right until the proper position for A[ j][ j]found (lines 4-7), at which point the value of A[j] [j]inserted (line 8).
A more formal treatment of the second property would require us to state and show a loop invariant for the “inner” while loop. At this point, however, we prefer not to get bogged down in such formalism, and so we rely on our informal analysis to show that the second property holds for the outer loop. • Termination: Finally, we examine what happens when the loop terminates. For insertion sort, the outer for loop ends when j exceeds n, i. e. , when j = n + 1. Substituting n + 1 for j in the wording of loop invariant, we have that the subarray A[1 n[1 n]sists of the elements originally in A[1 n[1 n]t in sorted order. But the subarray A[1 n[1 n]the entire array! Hence, the entire array is sorted, which means that the algorithm is correct.
We shall use this method of loop invariants to show correctness later in this chapter and in other chapters as well. Pseudocode conventions We use the following conventions in our pseudocode. 1. Indentation indicates block structure. For example, the body of the for loop that begins on line 1 consists of lines 2-8, and the body of the while loop that begins on line 5 contains lines 6-7 but not line 8. Our indentation style applies to if-then-else statements as well. Using indentation instead of conventional indicators of block structure, such as begin and end statements, greatly reduces clutter while preserving, or even enhancing, clarity. [2] [2]/p>
The looping constructs while, for, and repeat and the conditional constructs if, then, and else have interpretations similar to those in Pascal. [3] [3]re is one subtle difference with respect to for loops, however: in Pascal, the value of the loop-counter variable is undefined upon exiting the loop, but in this book, the loop counter retains its value after exiting the loop. Thus, immediately after a for loop, the loop counter’s value is the value that first exceeded the for loop bound. We used this property in our correctness argument for insertion sort. The for loop header in line 1 is for j composed of attributes or fields. A particular field is accessed using the field name followed by the name of its object in square brackets.
For example, we treat an array as an object with the attribute length indicating how many elements it contains. To specify the number of elements in an array A, we write length[A].[A]though we use square brackets for both array indexing and object attributes, it will usually be clear from the context which interpretation is intended. A variable representing an array or object is treated as a pointer to the data representing the array or object. For all fields f of an object x, setting y 3 as well. In other words, x and y point to (“are”) the same object after the assignment y Exercises 2. 1-2 Rewrite the INSERTION-SORT procedure to sort into nonincreasing instead of nondecreasing order. Exercises 2. 1-3 Consider the searching problem: • •
Input: A sequence of n numbers A = a1, a2, . . . , an and a value v. Output: An index i such that v = A[i] [i]the special value NIL if v does not appear in A. Write pseudocode for linear search, which scans through the sequence, looking for v. Using a loop invariant, prove that your algorithm is correct. Make sure that your loop invariant fulfills the three necessary properties. Exercises 2. 1-4 Consider the problem of adding two n-bit binary integers, stored in two n-element arrays A and B. The sum of the two integers should be stored in binary form in an (n + 1)-element array C. State the problem formally and write pseudocode for adding the two integers. [1] [1]>
When the loop is a for loop, the moment at which we check the loop invariant just prior to the first iteration is immediately after the initial assignment to the loop-counter variable and just before the first test in the loop header. In the case of INSERTION-SORT, this time is after assigning 2 to the variable j but before the first test of whether j ? length[A].[A] real programming languages, it is generally not advisable to use indentation alone to indicate block structure, since levels of indentation are hard to determine when code is split across pages. Most block-structured languages have equivalent constructs, though the exact syntax may differ from that of Pascal. [3] [3] [2]2 Analyzing algorithms Analyzing an algorithm has come to mean predicting the resources that the algorithm requires.
Occasionally, resources such as memory, communication bandwidth, or computer hardware are of primary concern, but most often it is computational time that we want to measure. Generally, by analyzing several candidate algorithms for a problem, a most efficient one can be easily identified. Such analysis may indicate more than one viable candidate, but several inferior algorithms are usually discarded in the process. Before we can analyze an algorithm, we must have a model of the implementation technology that will be used, including a model for the resources of that technology and their costs. For most of this book, we shall assume a generic one-processor, random-access machine (RAM) model of computation as our implementation technology and understand that our algorithms will be implemented as computer programs.
In the RAM model, instructions are executed one after another, with no concurrent operations. In later chapters, however, we shall have occasion to investigate models for digital hardware. Strictly speaking, one should precisely define the instructions of the RAM model and their costs. To do so, however, would be tedious and would yield little insight into algorithm design and analysis. Yet we must be careful not to abuse the RAM model. For example, what if a RAM had an instruction that sorts? Then we could sort in just one instruction. Such a RAM would be unrealistic, since real computers do not have such instructions. Our guide, therefore, is how real computers are designed.
The RAM model contains instructions commonly found in real computers: arithmetic (add, subtract, multiply, divide, remainder, floor, ceiling), data movement (load, store, copy), and control (conditional and unconditional branch, subroutine call and return). Each such instruction takes a constant amount of time. The data types in the RAM model are integer and floating point. Although we typically do not concern ourselves with precision in this book, in some applications precision is crucial. We also assume a limit on the size of each word of data. For example, when working with inputs of size n, we typically assume that integers are represented by c lg n bits for some constant c ? 1. We require c ? so that each word can hold the value of n, enabling us to index the individual input elements, and we restrict c to be a constant so that the word size does not grow arbitrarily. (If the word size could grow arbitrarily, we could store huge amounts of data in one word and operate on it all in constant time-clearly an unrealistic scenario. ) Real computers contain instructions not listed above, and such instructions represent a gray area in the RAM model. For example, is exponentiation a constant-time instruction? In the general case, no; it takes several instructions to compute xy when x and y are real numbers. In restricted situations, however, exponentiation is a constant-time operation. Many computers have a “shift left” instruction, which in constant time shifts the bits of an integer by k positions to the left.
In most computers, shifting the bits of an integer by one position to the left is equivalent to multiplication by 2. Shifting the bits by k positions to the left is equivalent to multiplication by 2k. Therefore, such computers can compute 2k in one constant-time instruction by shifting the integer 1 by k positions to the left, as long as k is no more than the number of bits in a computer word. We will endeavor to avoid such gray areas in the RAM model, but we will treat computation of 2k as a constant-time operation when k is a small enough positive integer. In the RAM model, we do not attempt to model the memory hierarchy that is common in contemporary computers.
That is, we do not model caches or virtual memory (which is most often implemented with demand paging). Several computational models attempt to account for memory-hierarchy effects, which are sometimes significant in real programs on real machines. A handful of problems in this book examine memory-hierarchy effects, but for the most part, the analyses in this book will not consider them. Models that include the memory hierarchy are quite a bit more complex than the RAM model, so that they can be difficult to work with. Moreover, RAM-model analyses are usually excellent predictors of performance on actual machines. Analyzing even a simple algorithm in the RAM model can be a challenge.
The mathematical tools required may include combinatorics, probability theory, algebraic dexterity, and the ability to identify the most significant terms in a formula. Because the behavior of an algorithm may be different for each possible input, we need a means for summarizing that behavior in simple, easily understood formulas. Even though we typically select only one machine model to analyze a given algorithm, we still face many choices in deciding how to express our analysis. We would like a way that is simple to write and manipulate, shows the important characteristics of an algorithm’s resource requirements, and suppresses tedious details. Analysis of insertion sort The time taken by