What is the average time complexity of searching for an element in an unsorted a

Practice Questions

Q1
What is the average time complexity of searching for an element in an unsorted array?
  1. O(1)
  2. O(n)
  3. O(log n)
  4. O(n^2)

Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions

What is the average time complexity of searching for an element in an unsorted array?
  • Step 1: Understand what an unsorted array is. An unsorted array is a collection of elements where the order does not matter.
  • Step 2: Know that searching means looking for a specific element in the array.
  • Step 3: Realize that in an unsorted array, you cannot skip any elements because you don't know where the target element is.
  • Step 4: If the array has 'n' elements, in the worst case, you might have to check all 'n' elements to find the target.
  • Step 5: Therefore, on average, you will check about half of the elements, which still leads to a time complexity of O(n).
  • Step 6: Conclude that the average time complexity for searching in an unsorted array is O(n).
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