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

Interpolation search

The interpolation searching algorithm is an improved version of the binary search algorithm. It performs very efficiently when there are uniformly distributed elements in the sorted list. In a binary search, we always start searching from the middle of the list, whereas in the interpolation search we determine the starting position depending on the item to be searched. In the interpolation search algorithm, the starting search position is most likely to be the closest to the start or end of the list depending on the search item. If the search item is near to the first element in the list, then the starting search position is likely to be near the start of the list.

The interpolation search is another variant of the binary ...