title: Pseudocode/Java Mystery Algorithm
body: <p>I have an algorithm, and I want to figure it what it does. I'm sure some of you can just look at this and tell me what it does, but I've been looking at it for half an hour and I'm still not sure. It just gets messy when I try to play with it. What are your techniques for breaking down an algoritm like this? How do I analyze stuff like this and know whats going on?</p>
  
  <p>My guess is its sorting the numbers from smallest to biggest, but I'm not too sure.</p>
  
  <pre><code>1. mystery(a1 , a2 , . . . an : array of real numbers)
      2. k = 1
      3. bk = a1
      4. for i = 2 to n
          5. c = 0
          6. for j = 1 to i − 1
              7. c = aj + c
          8. if (ai ≥ c)
              9. k = k + 1
             10. bk = ai
      11. return b1 , b2 , . . . , bk
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here's an equivalent I tried to write in Java, but I'm not sure if I translated properly:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public int[] foo(int[] a) {
          int k=1;
          int nSize=10;
          int[] b=new int[nSize];
          b[k]=a[1];
          for (int i=2;i&lt;a.length;){
              int c=0;
              for (int j=1;j&lt;i-1;)
                  c=a[j]+c;
              if (a[i]&gt;=c){
                  k=k+1;
                  b[k]=a[i];
  </code></pre>