# Finding the half with greatest elements in a set

Given an array with $2n$ elements, we want to select the greatest $n$ elements, i.e. obtain new array with these elements, no matter of the ordering (it's not necessary to be sorted). Can we do this in $O(n)$ time?

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• You can do it in linear time by using a randomized selection algorithm. – Aristu Jun 24 '17 at 1:45

Proceed in two phases.

1. Determine the median of the input.
2. Partition the input with the median as the pivot (cf. Quicksort).

Both steps take worst-case linear time. Note, though, that in practice you'd not use a linear-time selection algorithm but rather Quickselect, which is faster in expectation.

Let $L$ be a list of $n$ elements and $k \in \mathbb{N}, k < n$.

First Problem: Given $e \in L$, how to find the index of $e$ as if $L$ were sorted?

Solution: Just walk $L$ and count how many elements are smaller than $e$

Using this idea define a partition function, that takes the list $L$ and an element $e$ and returns all elements smaller than $e$ and greater than $e$.

def partition(L, e):
# Partitions L into 3 lists
# [_ < e], [e], [e < _]
smaller = []
bigger = []
for elm in L:
if elm < e:
smaller.append(elm)
if elm > e:
bigger.append(elm)
return smaller, [e], bigger


The selection algorithm described here outputs the $k$ smallest elements of $L$, you can easily modify the Python code to do what want. It works like this:

Pick $e \in L$ at random.

+--------------------+---+----------------------------+
|                    | e |                            |
+--------------------+---+----------------------------+


Now make a partition in $L$.

+--------------------+---+----------------------------+
|      LEFT          | e |        RIGHT               |
+--------------------+---+----------------------------+


Now check one of the following cases:

If $length(LEFT) < k$, then you already have some $length(LEFT) + 1$ smaller elements, that is $LEFT + \{e\}$, and need to find the other $k - length(LEFT) - 1$ in a smaller subset of $L$.

+--------------------+---+----------------------------+
|       LEFT         | e |        RIGHT               |
+--------------------+---+----------------------------+

+----------------------------+
|         New L              |
+----------------------------+


If $length(LEFT) = k$. Then it's over, you're really lucky.

If $length(LEFT) > k$. Then it's the same problem, in a smaller array.

+--------------------------------+---+----------------+
|       LEFT                     | e |    RIGHT       |
+--------------------------------+---+----------------+

+--------------------------------+
|         New L                  |
+--------------------------------+


The python code:

def selectK(L, k):
from random import choice
e = choice(L)
left, mid, right = partition(L, e)

if len(left) < k:
return left + [e] + selectK(right, k - (len(left) + 1))
if len(left) == k:
return left
if len(left) + 1 == k:
return left + [e]
if len(left) > k:
return selectK(left, k)


Test case:

L = [56, 24, 68, 36, 16, 4, 44, 40, 32, 8, 28, 20, 72, 64, 60, 52, 76, 0, 48, 12]
Output for k=6: [0, 4, 16, 8, 12, 20]