Standard Forth versus Python: a case study

Paul McGuire ptmcg at austin.rr._bogus_.com
Thu Oct 12 09:49:12 EDT 2006


<idknow at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1160652722.908731.213650 at i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Paul McGuire wrote:
>> <idknow at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1160619958.438049.53390 at h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> > [snip]
>> >
>> > no sort() is needed to calculate the median of a list.
>> >
>> > you just need one temp var.
>> >
>>
>> Ok, I'll bite.  How do you compute the median of a list using just a 
>> single
>> temp var?
>>
>> -- Paul
>
> hi Paul; well when this was a stats-class assignment (back when pascal
> was popular :) i just stepped through the vector and compared it
>
> (pseudo-code)
>
> ptr p = [with values].
>
> fun median {
> var x = 0.
>  while( *p++) {
>    if( (*p) > x) x = *p.
>  }
>  return x.
> }
>
> of course, pascal is more verbose but that's median()
>

No, that's the maximum.  The median value is the value that is in the middle 
of the list when the list is sorted.  Many analyses prefer median to mean 
(also known as "average") because the median is less sensitive to wild 
outlier points.

My original question was in response to your post, that sort() wasn't 
required but only a temp variable.  I am very interested in seeing your 
solution that does not require the data to be sorted.  (This is not just an 
academic exercise - given a large historical data set, sorting the data is 
one of the costliest parts of computing the median, and I would greatly 
appreciate seeing an alternative algorithm.)

-- Paul 





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