Chapter 6: Divide & Conquer

"Divide the problem. Conquer the complexity."

🏛️ The Academic View

Merge Sort guarantees \(O(N \log N)\). Quick Sort is \(O(N^2)\) in the worst case but "usually faster."

🏗️ The Engineering Reality

The difference between Stable and Unstable sorting destroys data integrity in production pipelines.

Key Topics: * Stability: Why Merge Sort preserves the order of equal elements (crucial for multi-column sorting). * Recursion Depth: Handling RecursionError in Python when dividing too deep.