Imagine you have a set of numbered cards, and your task is to put them in order from smallest to largest. Now, let's say there are too many cards for you to sort them all at once. Merge Sort is like having a helper who divides the cards into smaller groups, sorts each group separately, and then combines them back together in order.
Here's how Merge Sort works step by step:
1. Divide: Your helper starts by dividing the cards into smaller groups, each containing just a few cards. They continue dividing until each group only has one card. Now, a single card is already in order!
2. Sort: Next, your helper compares the cards in each pair of groups. They arrange the cards within each pair in the correct order, from smallest to largest.
3. Merge: Finally, your helper starts combining the sorted groups back together. They take two sorted groups at a time and merge them into a single, larger sorted group. They repeat this process until all the cards are back together in one big sorted stack.
By breaking the task into smaller, manageable parts and then combining them back together, Merge Sort helps you efficiently sort a large set of cards or numbers. It's like having a team of helpers working together to organize your cards neatly!
This pseudocode describes the Merge Sort algorithm, which recursively divides the input array into smaller sub-arrays until each sub-array has only one element. Then, it merges these sub-arrays back together in sorted order. This algorithm maintains a time complexity of O(n log n) and uses additional space for the temporary arrays during merging, also O(n).