To appreciate Radix Sort, consider the following analogy: Suppose that we wish to sort a deck of 52 playing cards (the different suits can be given suitable values, for example 1 for Diamonds, 2 for Clubs, 3 for Hearts and 4 for Spades). The 'natural' thing to do would be to first sort the cards according to suits, then sort each of the four seperate piles, and finally combine the four in order. This approach, however, has an inherent disadvantage. When each of the piles is being sorted, the other piles have to be kept aside and kept track of. If, instead, we follow the 'counterintuitive' aproach of first sorting the cards by value, this problem is eliminated. After the first step, the four seperate piles are combined in order and then sorted by suit. If a stable sorting algorithm (i.e. one which resolves a tie by keeping the number obtained first in the input as the first in the output) it can be easily seen that correct final results are obtained.