What is the average time complexity for searching an element in an unsorted arra
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the average time complexity for searching an element in an unsorted array?
O(1)
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n log n)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the average time complexity for searching 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 follow any specific pattern.
Step 2: Know that searching for an element means you need to find if that element exists in the array.
Step 3: Realize that in an unsorted array, you cannot skip any elements because they are not in order.
Step 4: To find an element, you may have to look at each element one by one until you find the target element or reach the end of the array.
Step 5: If there are 'n' elements in the array, in the worst case, you might have to check all 'n' elements.
Step 6: Therefore, the average time complexity for searching an element in an unsorted array is O(n), which means it can take time proportional to the number of elements.
