Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Python - Second Edition

Pivot selection

For the sake of simplicity, we'll take the first element in an array as the pivot. This kind of pivot selection degrades in performance, especially when sorting an already sorted list. Randomly picking the middle or last element in the array as the pivot does not improve the performance of the quick sort. We will discuss a better approach to select the pivot and find the smallest element in a list in the next chapter.