Clump Sort: A Stable Alternative to Heap Sort for Sorting Medical Data

Sorting data sets are a thoroughly researched field. Several sorting algorithms have been introduced and these include Bubble, Insertion, Selection, Shell, Quick, Merge and Heap. In this paper, we present a novel sorting algorithm,named Clump Sort, to take advantage of ordered segments already present in medical data sets. It succeeds in sorting the medical data considerably better than all the sorts except when using totally non-clumped data. In this test using totally nonclumped data, Heap sort does only slightly better than Clump sort. However, Clump sort has the advantage of being a stable sort as the original order of equal elements is preserved whereas in Heap sort, it is not since it does not guarantee that equal elements will appear in their original order after sorting. As such, Clump Sort will have considerably better data cache performance with both clumped and non-clumped data, outperforming Heap Sort on a modern desktop PC, because it accesses the elements in order. Sorting equal elements in the correct order is essential for sorting medical data.