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This lecture discusses how indirection is used to provide an efficient implementation of Python lists and other data structures. It also presents and analyzes the efficiency of selection and merge sort. |
About this Video
Topics covered: Memory, storage, indirection, sorting.
Resources
What is indirection (in computing)?
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Indirection is the ability to access something using a name or reference instead of the value itself.
We know that a linear search works on all lists and is O(len(L)). Can we sort a list in sub-linear time?
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No, because we can't sort a list without looking at each element at least once.
Can we even do it in linear time?
› View/hide answer
The answer is probably, no. But we can do it in O(n log n), where n is the length of the list.
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