Comment by ogogmad

Improved comparison sort when?

The following algebraic point of view could be utter hogwash, so I might embarrass myself... but if you think about it, the "merge" operation is isomorphic to the product in a free commutative monoid (over a large number of generators, otherwise you can use Counting Sort). So sorting is all about computing a bunch of products (merges) in the optimal order. Now consider mergesort, insertion sort, Timsort.