Atheist Gun Owners Unite!

I passed Calculus, finally. I also passed Physics, where oddly, on all three tests I received exactly an 80. I would say that I got an 80 on the final, except that it was extremely easy.

In the meantime I’ve been doing a little work around the house and on the car, and I’ve also done a little C programming, just for the heck of it.

I’ve revisited my infamous random sort algorithms. I used variations of a random sort algorithm in my data structures and algorithms class at UWYO, one or two homemade tests, and on a test for course placement at UTA (with a whole lot of controversy around that).

The one at UWYO was what I like to call the “shuffle the deck” variation. You assign each element in whatever list you want sorted a new place in the list, chosen randomly but only using each place once, and then check to see if it’s sorted. Repeat until the list is sorted. I remember doing this cleverly, but I can’t remember exactly how. I’m working on recreating it. (This is known as a Bogosort, apparently I wasn’t the first one to think of it.)

The one on that test at UTA was a simple swap two values, and check if sorted. It was all from memory in pseudo-code. This, also, is known as a Bozosort. All I had to do, according to the instructions, was to “Write, in pseudo-code, a sorting algorithm.” So, I wrote a sorting algorithm. I got bad marks on that test (but was still able to pass after a small scolding). Unfortunately, my requests to see the actual graded test went against deaf ears…

So, anyway, here’s what I have:


int isSorted(int array[], int length)
{
int c;
for (c = 0; c < (length - 1); ++c) if (!(array[c] <= array[c + 1])) return 0;

//rands2 - Shuffle sort v0
void rands2(int array[], int length)
{
int i;
while (!isSorted(array, length))
{
//give each array value a new index from an index pool and swap them all
}
}


I haven’t quite implemented my favorite yet. I have timed the sorting of random lists from 2 to 12 items long, each 1000 times. I turns out that sorting a list from 2-9 items is, as far as a human can tell, just as fast as quicksort and the like. It’s that magic number 10 where things start taking time. Then at 11 items it’s already unbearable. At a list size of 12 items it took 54 hours to sort 1000 unique lists, the average one taking 3 minutes or so.

I’m working on the bozosort, and can’t wait to see how slow it is.