In computer science, the median of medians is an approximate (median) selection algorithm, frequently used to supply a good pivot for an exact selection algorithm, mainly the quickselect, that selects the kth largest element of an initially unsorted array. Median of medians finds an approximate median in linear time only, which is limited but an additional overhead for quickselect. When this approximate median is used as an improved pivot, the worst-case complexity of quickselect reduces significantly from quadratic to linear, which is also the asymptotically optimal worst-case complexity of any selection algorithm. In other words, the median of medians is an approximate median-selection algorithm that helps building an asymptotically optimal, exact general selection algorithm (especially