Summary

Does the computational difference amount to much?

• Supercomputer running efficient insertion sort
  • 100 x 10⁶ instructions per second
  • 2n² instructions to sort n numbers

• Personal computer running inefficient merge sort
  • 1 x 10⁶ instructions per second
  • $50n \lg n$ instructions to sort n numbers

• Sorting one million numbers (n = 10⁶)

• Supercomputer: = 20,000 seconds = 5.56 hours
• Personal Computer: = 1000 seconds = 16.67 minutes
• MORAL: A little computational shrewdness can go a long way.