Analysis of radix selection on Markov sources

The complexity of the algorithm Radix Selection is considered for independent data generated from a Markov source. The complexity is measured by the number of bucket operations required and studied as a stochastic process indexed by the ranks; also the case of a uniformly chosen rank is considered. The orders of mean and variance of the complexity and limit theorems are derived. We find weak convergence of the appropriately normalized complexity towards a Gaussian process with explicit mean and covariance functions (in the space D[0, 1] of càdlàg functions on [0, 1] with the Skorokhod metric) for uniform data and the asymmetric Bernoulli model. For uniformly chosen ranks and uniformly distributed data the normalized complexity was known to be asymptotically normal. For a general Markov source (excluding the uniform case) we find that this complexity is less concentrated and admits a limit law with non-normal limit distribution. AMS 2010 subject classifications. Primary 68P10, 60F17; secondary 60G15, 60C05, 68Q25.