Quicksort is one of the fastest known algorithms for sorting arrays (in average it requires O (n log n) exchanges to order n elements). The algorithm was developed by Tony Hoare in 1960 during his work at Moscow State University. As it counterpart merge sort, it uses divide and conquer paradigm.
It seems that initially this rule was used in politics, warfare and in tactical maneuvers. But nowadays, we can also meet this principle in economics, computer science, usually we can solve a complex problem using divide and conquer technique. The main idea behind this is to take something big and divide it into small pieces, farther, we can easy work with small piece.