Selection Vs Counting Sort

Prothom Antor Banik

Md. Shifat Alam
Arafat Hossain
Asraful Islam
Shadman Saleheen
Ridwanul Islam Pavel

January 2024
Introduction

helo
Background Study

Selection Sort
Selection sort operates by repeatedly selecting the minimum element from an
unsorted portion of the dataset and placing it at the beginning.

Algorithm:

1: for j ← 1 to n − 1 do
2: smallest ← j
3: for k ← j + 1 to n do
4: if A[k] < A[min] then
5: min ← k
6: end if
7: end for
8: Swap A[min] and A[j]
9: end for
Selection Sort (Example)

The algorithm repeatedly selects the smallest (or largest) element from the unsorted
portion of the list and swaps it with the first element of the unsorted part.
Background Study

Counting Sort
Counting sort is a non comparison based linear time sorting Algorithm.

Algorithm:
1: Counting-Sort(A, B, k):
2: for i ← 0 to k do
3: C[i] ← 0
4: end for
5: for j ← 1 to A.length do
6: C[A[j]] ← C[A[j]] + 1
7: end for
8: for i ← 1 to k do
9: C[i] ← C[i] + C[i − 1]
10: end for
11: for j ← A.length down to 1 do
12: B[C[A[j]]] ← A[j]
13: C[A[j]] ← C[A[j]] − 1
14: end for
Counting Sort (Example)

It is a non comparison based sorting algorithm. It operates by counting the frequency

of the elements and using Arithmetic operations, finds the position of them.[5]

4 2 2 1 0 1 2 0 1
(a) Data (b) Frequency

0 1 3 3 4 1 2 2 4
(c) Cumulative Frequency (d) Sorted Data
Result and Analysis

Topic Selection Sort Counting Sort

Algorithm Type Comparison-based Non-comparison-based
Stability Not stable Stable
Time Complexity O(n2 ) O(n + k)
Space Complexity O(1) O(k)
Applicability Often not the first choice Particularly efficient when
for large datasets due to its the range of input values is
quadratic time complexity. It is not significantly larger than
more suitable for small datasets. the number of elements. It is
suitable for sorting integers
or objects with discrete keys.
Table: Summary of differences.
Time Complexity Analysis

Comparative Analysis for n ≈ k

Counting sort excels in efficiency when the number of elements in the array n equals
the range of values k.

Figure: Comparative runtime when k ≈ n.

Time Complexity Analysis
Comparative Analysis for k >> n
When dealing with a significantly large value for k, counting sort transitions from
being the best to the worst choice. Consequently, selection sort emerges as a more
efficient alternative. [8]

Figure: Comparative runtime when k >> n.

Space Complexity Analysis

In-place Sorting
In-place sorting algorithms are algorithms that don’t require extra space proportional
to the input size. They sort the data using only a constant amount of extra space.

Selection Sort:
Counting Sort:
Swapping is done directly within the
As two extra arrays of size n and k is used,
original array without the need for
the space complexity of Counting Sort
additional memory. Hence, the space
algorithm is O(n + k).
complexity is O(1).
Stability
Stability Analysis of the Algorithms
Selection Sort:
Selection sort works by repeatedly
finding the minimum (or maximum)
element from the unsorted portion of
the array and swapping it with the
first unsorted element, leading to
instability.
Counting Sort:
The algorithm first counts the number
of occurrences of each unique
element in the input array and uses
this information for determining the
correct position of each element.
Therefore, this algorithm is stable [2].
Conclusion

To Summarize

Selection Sort is a comparison-based, Counting Sort is a

in-place, and unstable sorting non-comparison-based, stable sorting
algorithm with quadratic time algorithm with linear time complexity
complexity, making it efficient for under certain conditions, making it
small datasets. efficient for specific scenarios.
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