Question 39: Quicksort vs Linear Search

Quote:

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Would you rather wait for the results of a quicksort, a linear search, or a bubble sort on a 200000 element array?

Quicksort
Linear Search
Bubble Sort

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The answer is linear search but I believe this question is hard to answer because I don't know if the results are coming from a sorting algorithm or a search. If we're talking about a sort the answer would be quicksort, and if we're searching it would obviously be linear search, am I right?

A linear search is O(n). Quick sort is O(n log(n)) [in its best case]. Bubble sort is O(n^2).

Which is the shortest of those three? O(n)

Whether your searching or sorting is irrelevant. The point of the question is to see which algorithm runs in the fastest time.

<pedant>Without a statement that says the dataset is not in order, the question is meaningless.</pedant>