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Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by WalterGR on Monday July 02, 2018 @12:07AM (#17439281)
I feel like this is important to note:

My example of real world data is data in which the first 90% is already sorted and the next 10% is random. Whether this is real enough is questionable, but it does demonstrate how Timsort automatically takes advantage of runs of sorted data.

It would be nice to see a comparison working on truly real-world data. Perhaps from an open dataset.

Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by cntlzw on Monday July 02, 2018 @04:16AM (#17440053)
I am experimenting with Lidar datasets lately. In lidar you work with huge point clouds. Millions to billions. For some algorithms - convex hull - you need to sort the points for example by x-cooridinate. I did some quick tests with quick sort, merge sort, and timsort. In my experiments quick sort was the slowest with 5.5 seconds on the chosen dataset. Mergesort was 5 seconds and timsort was around 4 seconds.
Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by beagle3 on Monday July 02, 2018 @07:25AM (#17440763)
When sorting coordinates, radix sort with an appropriately chose radix (often but not always 256) is usually fastest.
Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by cntlzw on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @02:55AM (#17448090)
Hi there, thanks. Need to try this
Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by CogitoCogito on Monday July 02, 2018 @01:53AM (#17439577)
Yeah seeing more datasets would definitely be nice. I linked my GitHub repo where I made the changes necessary for this example in the YouTube video. Using the last commit (the only changes from upstream) as a guide, other datasets cold be supported similarly.

That said, I don't think my choice of data is that bad actually. Apparently starting with a sorted dataset, appending some new items, and then sorting the result again is very commonly done by programmers. That is essentially what's represented in my example.

Re:Timsort is a sorting algorithm that is efficient for real... by justinclift on Monday July 02, 2018 @09:11AM (#17441307)
Maybe the UK Postcode lookup database?

It's about 650MB (CSV):

https://data.gov.uk/dataset/7ec10db7-c8f4-4a40-8d82-8921935b...

In theory, it's supposed to be updated every now and then, but doesn't seem to have happened since 2015. :(

For a direct SQLite version of it, we have it on DBHub:

https://dbhub.io/justinclift/National%20Statistics%20Postcod...

That site is still in (slow) development though. YMMV. :)