Frequently Asked Questions

Note: I am putting these here because students have asked them in the past, this is not a reflection of what will be on quizzes. 

Q: When would we use quick sort?

A: Java uses a variation of Quick sort in its .sort method on ArrayLists and in certain cases it can perform better than merge sort. 

Q: Is the "average" time complexity the same as what we'd call the best time complexity, or is it technically possible to do better than the average of O(nlogn)?

A: For Quick Sort the Best and the Average time complexities are the same, though the worst case is O(n^2).