Average-Case Complexity of Shellsort
Tao Jiang, Ming Li, Paul M. B. Vitanyi · arXiv (Cornell University) · 1999
We prove a general lower bound on the average-case complexity of Shellsort: the average number of data-movements (and comparisons) made by a $p$-pass Shellsort for any incremental sequence is $Ω(pn^{1 + 1/p)$ for all $p \leq \log n$. Using similar arguments, we analyze the average-case complexity of several other sorting algorithms.