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93 points rbanffy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
1. pfdietz ◴[] No.43747913[source]
Expander graphs are cool.

Consider the following computer sciency problem: construct an acyclic network of "sorting gates" (which take x and y as input and output min(x,y) and max(x,y)) so that it sorts n inputs.

A merge-sort like algorithm had been known that worked in O(n(logn)^2) gates. It was an open problem for a while if it could be done with O(nlogn) gates (which would be the best possible). This was settled in the affirmative via a construction using expander graphs.