The first project involves benchmarking the behavior of Java implementations of one of the following sorting algorithms, bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, Shell sort, merge sort, quick sort or heap sort. You must post your selection in the "Ask the Professor" conference. No more than five students may select any one algorithm.
You must write the code to perform the benchmarking of the algorithm you selected. Your program must include both an iterative and recursive version of the algorithm. You do not have to write the sorting algorithms yourself, you may take them from some source, but you must reference your source.
You must identify some critical operation to count that reflects the overall performance and modify each version so that it counts that operation. In addition to counting critical operations you must measure the actual run time.
In addition, you should examine the result of each call to verify that the data has been properly sorted to verify the correctness of the algorithm. If the array is not sorted, an exception should be thrown.
It should also randomly generate data to pass to the sorting methods. It should produce 50 data sets for each value of n, the size of the data set and average the result of those 50 runs. The exact same data must be used for the iterative and the recursive algorithms. It should also create 10 different sizes of data sets. Choose sizes that will clearly demonstrate the trend as n becomes large.
You should also calculate the coefficient of variance of the critical operation counts and time measurement for the 50 runs of each data set size as a way to gauge the data sensitivity of the algorithm.
Your program must be written to conform to the following design: see image.
Your output should look at follows: see image.
The data set sizes above are examples. You are to select the actual data set sizes. On the due date for project 1, you are to submit a .zip file that includes the source code of your complete program. All the classes should be in the default package.
You must research the issue of JVM warm-up necessary for properly benchmarking Java programs and ensure that your code performs the necessary warm-up so the time measurements are accurate.
Project 2 involves writing an analysis of the results that you obtained in first project. You are to submit a paper that discusses the results of your analysis. Your paper should include the following items:
A brief introduction of the sorting algorithm that you have selected and how the two versions of the algorithm compare including:
An analysis of the results of your study, which should include:
A conclusion that summarizes the important observations of your study
If for any reason, it was necessary to revise the program you submitted in project 1, the revised source code should also be included along with the paper.