- #1
Monte_Carlo
- 72
- 0
Hi guys,
My professor recently asked a challenging question - he says it's been asked on an interview and he wanted to pose it as a homework.
Attached is the graph of sorting algorithm performance. The interviewer asks: "Tell me everything you can about this algorithm just by looking at the data on the plot." Obviously the idea is to characterize performance and nature of the algorithm. It's a sorting algorithm operating on strings. The x-axis is the number of elements in the input and the y-axis is the tick-count to complete the sort. That's the universe of information.
Does it even sound reasonable? It's the first time I find such a question on algorithm analysis. Usually the questions are of the form: "... given this code, characterize the complexity of this algorithm ... " but this one sort-of in reverse. I believe the algorithm is not standard but it is an interview-based problem, so I'm assuming it's reasonable to try it hard.
Thanks,
Monte
My professor recently asked a challenging question - he says it's been asked on an interview and he wanted to pose it as a homework.
Attached is the graph of sorting algorithm performance. The interviewer asks: "Tell me everything you can about this algorithm just by looking at the data on the plot." Obviously the idea is to characterize performance and nature of the algorithm. It's a sorting algorithm operating on strings. The x-axis is the number of elements in the input and the y-axis is the tick-count to complete the sort. That's the universe of information.
Does it even sound reasonable? It's the first time I find such a question on algorithm analysis. Usually the questions are of the form: "... given this code, characterize the complexity of this algorithm ... " but this one sort-of in reverse. I believe the algorithm is not standard but it is an interview-based problem, so I'm assuming it's reasonable to try it hard.
Thanks,
Monte