Sortedness

Before we introduce our next algorithm, we need to take a brief detour to talk about sortedness.

We say a list is sorted when each element is no smaller than the previous one. Let’s unpack that definition:

1. If our list is [x, y, z], then it must be that x <= y and y <= z (so x <= z transitively).

2. By default, sortedness means sorted ascending.

3. The empty list is trivially sorted, e.g., [] is sorted.

4. A list with one element is trivially sorted, e.g., [47] is sorted.

5. Sorted lists can have duplicates, e.g., [0,1,1,2,2,2] is sorted ascending.

People sometimes refer to other notions of sorting, like sorted descending or sorted on a particular aspect (e.g., sorting by last name and then first name). But if nothing else is specified, the default is to sort ascending.