Sorting

[DasAllFolks]

Should we basically expect questions on all types of searches and
sorts covered in the course, including bubble sort, insertion sort,
selection sort, binary search (for a sorted list), quick sort, merge
sort, heap sort, BST sort, and merge sort? Also, with the excepton of
those for which we have already coded extensively on labs or exams,
should we expect questions on these topics to be more conceptual (i.e.
tracing a search and writing out the result/showing the process)
rather than creating hard code to execute it?

[Greg]

> Should we basically expect questions on all types of searches and
> sorts covered in the course, including bubble sort, insertion sort,
> selection sort, binary search (for a sorted list), quick sort, merge
> sort, heap sort, BST sort, and merge sort?

Yep! All are fair game. Quick sort is a bit less favored than the
others.

> Also, with the excepton of
> those for which we have already coded extensively on labs or exams,
> should we expect questions on these topics to be more conceptual (i.e.
> tracing a search and writing out the result/showing the process)
> rather than creating hard code to execute it?

You will not be asked to reimplement any of the sorts. This is a dumb
memorization question. Don't waste your time. Instead, try to
understand them.

You could be asked to trace them, to identify a sort by trace, or to
compare them. But, we tried really hard to be creative. Make sure you
really understand hwo they work -- and when they work well. Especially
in edge cases. We really want to amke sure that you "get" how they
work at an intuitive level. We tried realyl hard to ask questions
creatively so that neither memorizing the code, nor the algorithms,
not some list of characteristics will help. You've really got to have
the intuition for soem questions.