title: When to use merge sort and when to use quick sort?
body: <p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_sort" rel="noreferrer">wikipedia article for merge sort</a>.</p>
  
  <p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort" rel="noreferrer">wikipedia article for quick sort</a>.</p>
  
  <p>Both articles have excellent visualizations.</p>
  
  <p>Both have n*log(n) complexity.</p>
  
  <p>So obviously the distribution of the data will effect the speed of the sort.  My guess would be that since a comparison can just as quickly compare any two values, no matter their spread, the range of data values does not matter.</p>
  
  <p>More importantly one should consider the lateral distribution (x direction ) with respect to ordering (magnitude removed).</p>
  
  <p>A good test case to consider would be if the test data had some level of sorting...</p>