Experimental Algorithm Analysis

Here are seven short C language programs, all of whose time complexities are a function of $n$. Each program accepts an integer value $n$ as its command line argument. They can be downloaded as a single shar file or individually:

• 2-to-n.c
• binary-search.c
• fac_time.c
• insert-sort.c
• merge-sort.c
• seq-search.c
• triple.c

Note that one of them must be compiled with the -lm option..

Using the Unix time command (or its equivalent), run each of them for various values of $n$, and graph the results. If a program takes too long to run in a minute or so, use a smaller input.

Order the programs by efficiency? Do the run times exhibit the predicted time complexities?