Heap sort is a comparison-based sorting by using max-heap or min-heap.

## max-heap and min-heap

A max-heap is a complete binary tree in which the value of each internal node is greater than or equal to the values of that node's children.

Same as max-heap, but in min-heap, the value of the parent node is lesser than or equal to the values of the children nodes.

As a complete binary tree, we can represent the max-heap or min-heap as an array. Starting from mapping the root node to index 0, we map each node from top to bottom and from left to right in the tree to a index in the array with one-to-one correspondence.

Then we'll find that if the parent node is at the index i, the left child will be at the index 2*i+1 and the right child will be at the index 2*i+2.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12   ┌───100(0)────┐ │ │ ┌───19(1)──┐ ┌──36(2)──┐ │ │ │ │ ┌─17(3)─┐ 3(4) 25(5) 1(6) │ │ 2(7) 7(8) ┌───┬──┬──┬──┬─┬──┬─┬─┬─┐ │100│19│36│17│3│25│1│2│7│ └───┴──┴──┴──┴─┴──┴─┴─┴─┘ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

### Heapify

As we know, in max-heap, each node should follow the max-heap property, which means each node's value should be greater than or equal to its children's.

First, let's assume that one node's both child sub-tree follow the max-heap property, and the process that maintain this node's max-heap property is called max-heapify. Similarly, min-heap has min-heapify.

The process of max-heapify for one node consists the steps below

1. Compare the node's value with its children's, if it meets the max-heap property, stop.

2. If the node violdates the max-heap property, swap this node with one child node with max value and then go back to step 1 to repeat again.

Here is the rust function below that implements the max-heapify. The following code could help us understand the heapify process more precisely.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20  fn max_heapify(arr: &mut [T], i: usize) { let mut largest = i; let left = 2 * i + 1; let right = 2 * i + 2; let len = arr.len(); if left < len && arr[left] > arr[largest] { largest = left; } if right < len && arr[right] > arr[largest] { largest = right; } if largest != i { let tmp = arr[i]; arr[i] = arr[largest]; arr[largest] = tmp; max_heapify(arr, largest); } } 

### Build heap

If there's only one node violates the heap property. We only need to heapify this node to convert the tree to heap. As the process of heapify won't break the heap properties of other nodes.

But if there are more than one invalid node, it will not fix the other invaid nodes by just heapfiying one of them.

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8   One invalid node Two invalid nodes ┌───100(0)────┐ ┌───100(0)────┐ │ │ │ │ ┌───*5(1)──┐ ┌──36(2)──┐ ┌───*5(1)──┐ ┌──36(2)──┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┌─17(3)─┐ 3(4) 25(5) 1(6) ┌─*7(3)─┐ 3(4) 25(5) 1(6) │ │ │ │ 2(7) 7(8) 2(7) 17(8)

We can build heap by heapify all the nodes one by one from right to left and from bottom to top.

As all the leaf nodes have no children, they all meet the heap properties, so we don't need to heapify and can just skip them. And we can treat them as valid sub heap with only one node.

Now we can find that all the sub trees whose height is 1 are valid sub heaps, so we can heapify all of their parent nodes one by one to turn all the sub trees whose height is 2 to valid sub heaps.

In this way, we keep heapifying nodes with valid child sub heaps from right to left and from bottom to top until to the root node to heapify the whole tree.

Here is the rust code below that heapify a whole tree.

For tree with n nodes, the index of the last node is n-1, then the index of its parent is $\lfloor{\frac{n-2}{2}}\rfloor=\lfloor{\frac{n}{2}}\rfloor-1$, so the node with index $\lfloor{\frac{n}{2}}\rfloor-1$ is the last node that with children.

 1 2 3 4  let len = arr.len(); for i in (0..(len / 2)).rev() { max_heapify(arr, i); } 

## Heap sort

The Heap sort consists of the following steps:

1. Build a heap (max-heap for ascending order, min-heap for descending order) from a complete binary tree.

2. Sperate the array to 2 parts, first part is heap, and the second part is sorted list. All the elements are in the heap at this point.

3. Switch the root node with the last node in the heap

4. Reduce the size of heap by excluding the current last node, which means move the node with max/min value in max-heap/min-heap to the beginning of the sorted list.

5. Heapify the current root node and go back to step 3 to repeat it again and again til all the nodes moved to sorted list.

Here is the rust code for max heap sort.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17  fn max_heapsort(arr: &mut [T]) { let len = arr.len(); // from 0 to (len/2 - 1) for i in (0..(len / 2)).rev() { max_heapify(arr, i); } // from (len-1) to 0 for j in (1..len).rev() { // switch root node with last node let tmp = arr[0]; arr[0] = arr[j]; arr[j] = tmp; // exlude last node j from heap max_heapify(&mut arr[0..j], 0); } } 

## Time complexity

### Time complexity of heapify method

The best case for heapify would happen when the node meets the heap property. After two comparisons, there are no extra operations, so the runtime in the best case would be $O(1)$.

#### Solution 1

The worst case would happen when we need to walk through the tree from top to bottom. Assume the height of the tree is $H$, then the time complexity in worst case is $O(H)$

As we know the size of a full binary tree (or perfect binary tree) with height $H$ is

\begin{aligned} S_{full}(H) &= 2^{0} + 2^{1} + 2^{2} + ... 2^{H} \\ 2S_{full}(H) &= 2^{1} + 2^{2} + 2^{3} + ... 2^{H} + 2^{H+1} \\ \implies S_{full}(H) &= 2S_{full}(H) - S_{full}(H) = 2^{H+1} - 1 \end{aligned}

As a complete binary tree, the size of heap follows the inequation below

\begin{aligned} S_{full}(H-1) &< S_{heap}(H) \leq S_{full}(H) \\ 2^{H} - 1 &< S_{heap}(H) \leq 2^{H+1} - 1 \\ \text{Assume: } S_{heap}(H) &= n \\ \text{then: } 2^{H} - 1 &< n \leq 2^{H+1} - 1 \\ \end{aligned}

Then we can get the height $H$ from the size of a heap $n$

\begin{aligned} 2^{H} - 1 &< n \leq 2^{H+1} - 1 \\ \implies log_{2}(n+1) - 1 &\leq H < log_{2}(n+1) \\ \implies H &= \lceil{log_{2}(n+1)}\rceil - 1 \end{aligned}

So the complexity of heapify is

\begin{aligned} T(n) = O(H) = O(\lceil{log_{2}(n+1)}\rceil - 1) = O(log_{2}n) \end{aligned}

#### Solution 2

The recurrence of heapify should be something as below. The cost of swaping elements to walk through one level of tree is constant, so it can be represented as $\Theta(1)$

\begin{aligned} T(n) &= T(?) + \Theta(1) \end{aligned}

Then we need to figure it out what's the size of the sub-problem $T(?)$.

In the best case, size of the child sub trees are equal, then the size of the sub-problem is $T(\frac{n-1}{2})$

In the worst case, both sub trees are full binary tree, but the height of left sub tree is 1 level higher than the right.

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   The best case The worst case ┌──────(0)────┐ ┌──────(0)────┐ │ │ │ │ ┌───(1)──┐ ┌──(2)──┐ ┌─── (1)──┐ ┌──(2)──┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ (3) (4) (5) (6) ┌─(3)─┐ ┌─(4)─┐ (5) (6) │ │ │ │ (7) (8) (9) (10)

Then let's assume the height of right sub tree is $H$, and the height of left one is $H+1$.

So we can get that:

• the size of left sub tree is $2^{H+2}-1$.

• the size of right sub tree is $2^{H+1}-1$

• the total size of heap is $(2^{H+2}-1)+(2^{H+1}-1)+1=2^{H+2}+2^{H+1}-1$

The ration of left sub tree to heap is

\begin{aligned} \frac{2^{H+2}-1}{2^{H+2}+2^{H+1}-1} = \frac{2-\frac{1}{2^{H+1}-1}}{2+1-\frac{1}{2^{H+1}-1}} = \frac{2-\frac{1}{2^{H+1}-1}}{3-\frac{1}{2^{H+1}-1}} \end{aligned}

So now we can get the recurrence of the heapify, and it meets the case 2 of master theorem.

\begin{aligned} T(n) & \leq T(2n/3) + \Theta(1) \\ \implies T(n) &= O(log_{2}n) \end{aligned}

### Time complexity of build heap

If one node's index is $i$, then the index of its parent is $\lfloor{\frac{i-1}{2}}\rfloor$.

For tree with $n$ nodes, the index of the last node is $n-1$, then the index of the last node's parent is $\lfloor{\frac{n-2}{2}}\rfloor$, the parent of the last node also is the last node whose height is 1.

Then last node with height 1 is $\lfloor{\frac{n}{2}}\rfloor-1$, the first node with height 1 is $\lfloor{\frac{n}{4}}\rfloor$.

For height $H$, last node is $\lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H}}}\rfloor-1$, first node $\lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H+1}}}\rfloor$, so the number of nodes with height $H$ is

\begin{aligned} (\lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H}}}\rfloor-1) - (\lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H+1}}}\rfloor) + 1 = \lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H}}}\rfloor - \lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H+1}}}\rfloor \leq \lceil{\frac{n}{2^{H+1}}}\rceil \end{aligned}

And the index of root node is

\begin{aligned} \lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H}}}\rfloor - 1 &= \lfloor{\frac{n}{2^{H+1}}}\rfloor = 0 \\ \end{aligned}

So the height of the root

\begin{aligned} \implies log_{2}n - 1 &< H \leq log_{2}n \\ \implies H &= \lfloor{log_{2}n}\rfloor \end{aligned}

Then we can conclude that the time complexity is

\begin{aligned} T(n) &= \sum_{h=0}^{\lfloor{log_{2}n}\rfloor}{\lceil{\frac{n}{2^{h+1}}}\rceil{O(h)}} \\ &= O(\sum_{h=0}^{\lfloor{log_{2}n}\rfloor}{\lceil{\frac{n}{2^{h+1}}}\rceil{h}}) \\ 1 \leq \frac{n}{2^{h+1}} \leq \lceil{\frac{n}{2^{h+1}}}\rceil & < \frac{n}{2^{h+1}} + 1 < \frac{n}{2^{h}} \\ \implies T(n) &= O(n\sum_{h=0}^{\lfloor{log_{2}n}\rfloor}{\frac{h}{2^{h}}}) \\ &\leq O(n\sum_{h=0}^{\infty}{\frac{h}{2^{h}}}) = O(n\frac{1/2}{[1-(1/2)]^{2}}) = O(2n) = O(n) \end{aligned}

Summation formular of an infinite geometric series.

\begin{aligned} \sum_{k=0}^{\infty}{x^{k}} = \frac{1}{1-x}, \text{when } |x| < 1 \end{aligned}

Summation formular of an infinite differentiating geometric series

\begin{aligned} \sum_{k=0}^{\infty}{kx^{k-1}} = \frac{1}{(1-x)^{2}}, \text{when } |x| < 1 \end{aligned}

### Time complexity of heap sort

The first step of heap sort is build heap, the time complexity of this step is $O(n)$.

The second step is swap root node with last node of heap, the time complexity is $O(1)$.

The third step is exlude the last node, and heapify the new root node, the time complexity $O(h)$, where h is the height of the heap.

Then go back to the second step and repeat it again and again til no node left in heap.

\begin{aligned} T(n) &= O(n) + \sum_{i=n-1}^{1}{[O(1)+O(log_{2}i)]} \\ &= \sum_{i=1}^{n-1}{O(log_{2}{i})} \\ &= O(log_{2}{[1*2*...(n-3)*(n-2)*(n-1)]} = log_{2}{[(n-1)!]}) \\ &= O((n-1)\log_{2}{(n-1)} - n\log_{2}{e} + \log_{2}{n}) \\ &= O(n\log_{2}{n}) \end{aligned}

\begin{aligned} \ln(n!) &= n\ln{n} - n + \Theta(\ln{n}) \\ \log_{2}{(n!)} &= n\log_{2}{n} - n\log_{2}{e} + \Theta{(\log_{2}{n})} \end{aligned}

## Summary

• The time complexity of heap sort is $O(n\log_{2}{n})$.

• The space complexity of heap sort is $O(1)$, so it is an in-place algorithm

• Its typical implementation is not stable, but can be made stable (Read this).