What is the time complexity of accessing an element in an array by index?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the time complexity of accessing an element in an array by index?
O(n)
O(log n)
O(1)
O(n log n)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the time complexity of accessing an element in an array by index?
Step 1: Understand what an array is. An array is a collection of elements stored in a specific order.
Step 2: Know that each element in an array can be accessed using an index. The index is a number that tells you the position of the element in the array.
Step 3: Realize that accessing an element by its index means you can directly jump to that position in the array without looking at other elements.
Step 4: Understand that this direct access takes the same amount of time no matter how big the array is. This is because the computer knows exactly where to find the element.
Step 5: Conclude that since the time taken to access an element does not change with the size of the array, we say it has a time complexity of O(1), which means constant time.
