TASK DEFINITION: In this task you will be given a text passage from a trivia quiz. You should choose the category this question belongs to from these categories: History, Science, Social Science, Fine Arts, Literature. You can only choose one category, so if in doubt, please choose the closest match.
PROBLEM: In 1999, McIlroy created an adversary for this algorithm that guarantees that it will run in worst-case time. Its worst-case runtime can be avoided by switching to heapsort after a certain recursion depth, a construction known as introsort. Like mergesort, it is easily parallelizable, and its runtime can be decreased by first selecting the median of the unsorted input list. It was invented by C.A.R. Hoare, and its second phase is the partition function, which splits the original list into lists of elements that are greater or less than the chosen pivot value. For 10 points, identify this divide-and-conquer sorting algorithm which runs in big O of n log n time, named for its speed.

SOLUTION: Science

PROBLEM: Victims are special types of these that store entries that were removed from the general type of them. Ones with a no-write allocation policy do not need to worry about the decision to write-through or write-back. Misses in them include compulsory misses, which generally must occur on the first request, as well as conflict misses that result from an entry once in them having been evicted. In cases where data can be placed in exactly one place in them they are known as direct mapped, while the set associative type provides a compromise in locations between direct mapping and fully associative. FTP, identify this term which names a type of memory faster than the RAM accessed by the CPU, as well as for data your web browser stores locally on your hard drive.

SOLUTION: Science

PROBLEM: One story involving this figure, who disappears at the end of Dvapara Yuga, involves him making his friend rich by magically replacing rice with flakes of gold, while in another account he saves his home town from an invasion by enacting a mass migration. Early in his life, he tamed the serpent Kaliya. Other exploits attributed to this figure include killing the demoness (*) Putana and his uncle Kamsa, and defying Indra by banning his town's yearly ritual. This possessor of a famous conch was smuggled as an infant from a prison by his adoptive parents, Yasoda and Nanda, despite his royal birth to Devaki and Vasudeva. FTP, name this Hindu figure, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, who in his most famous role counseled the Pandava prince Arjuna in the Bhagvada Gita.

SOLUTION:
Social Science