Efficiency, not effectiveness. They are all effective in the sense that they produce sorted results. Even the non-modern sort algorithms are effective in the sense that the results are correct. This should be about the efficiency with which they do it, right?

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JSR_FDED 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

From TFA:

The title is an homage to Eugene Wigner's 1960 paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences".

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aabhay 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed. Effectiveness would imply that some algorithms are more likely to sort the list correctly than others, or they sort a higher percentage of elements. Efficiency is about factors external to the correctness

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creata 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" is one of those titles that gets imitated a lot for some reason. Maybe even more than "Goto Considered Harmful".

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kwertyoowiyop 3 days ago | parent [-]

Coming next: “What we talk about when we talk about modern sort algorithms”

	▲	rcxdude 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		or "we need to talk about what we talk about when we talk about the unreasonable effectiveness of title memes are all you need considered harmful"
	▲	chuckadams 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		"Optimize your sorts with this one weird trick." "What they don't want you to know about sorting."
	▲	j_not_j 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ascending is all you need.