Tag Archive for function

Have we already seen this number? (deja vu again)

I had a phone interview for a Python job the other day. It started out really well, he was very impressed with my CV and called me a ‘rocket scientist’. But then we got down to the technical questions and my brain decided to go out to lunch, and (yet again) I managed to snatch defeat…

Popular Sorting Algorithms

Sorting is probably the most common type of algorithm in programming. A sorting algorithm puts elements of a list in a certain order. The most-used orders are numerical, and alphabetical. It’s extremely useful in many applications, because sorted data can be searched or merged very quickly (e.g. by binary search). A sorted data set is one where every item…

Binary Search

Binary Search is one of the most fundamental computer algorithms. Given an ordered list of some data (names, numbers, …) find out if it contains a particular item. For example, consider the list: 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12. If we ask if it contains the number 5, the algorithm should return 2 (counting…