Merge Sort: Analysis

The merge sort runs in $O(n \lg n)$ time.

Justification:

  • The number of times the merge sort divides a sequence is the number of times $n$ can be halved: $O(\lg n)$.
  • The number of times merge sort merges the subsequences is equal to the number of sub-sequences. Therefore, the merging part also has $O(\lg n)$ steps.

  • Since the merge process is linear, each merge steps goes over all $n$ elements.

  • So the total running time for the merge sort algorithm is $O(n \lg n)$,

Formal Proof

A more formal proof can be constructed by writing the runtime of merge sort as a recurrence relation $T(n) = 2T(n/2) + \theta(n)$ and showing $T(n) \in \theta(n \lg n)$.

If you want to look this up, search for "the master theorem for divide-and-conquer recurrences" and look up "case 2". This is, however, beyond the scope of this course.

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