An Improved Randomized Selection Algorithm With an Experimental Study

Authors

D.A. Bader

Document Type

Technical Report

Publication Date

9-1-1999

Abstract

A common statistical problem is that of finding the median element in a set of data. This paper presents an efficient randomized high-level parallel algorithms for finding the median given a set of elements distributed across a parallel machine. In fact, our algorithm solves the general selection problem that requires the determination of the element of rank k, for an arbitrarily given integer k. Our general framework is an SPMD distributed memory programming model that is enhanced by a set of communication primitives. We use efficient techniques for distributing and coalescing data as well as efficient combinations of task and data parallelism. The algorithms have been coded in the message passing standard MPI, and our experimental results from the IBM SP-2 illustrate the scalability and efficiency of our algorithm and improve upon all the related experimental results known to the authors.

Recommended Citation

Bader, D.A.. "An Improved Randomized Selection Algorithm With an Experimental Study." (1999). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ece_rpts/4