What is the average case time complexity of binary search?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the average case time complexity of binary search?
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n log n)
O(1)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the average case time complexity of binary search?
Step 1: Understand what binary search is. It is a method to find an item in a sorted list by repeatedly dividing the search interval in half.
Step 2: Know that binary search starts with the entire list and checks the middle item.
Step 3: If the middle item is the target, the search is done. If not, it decides whether to search the left half or the right half based on whether the target is smaller or larger than the middle item.
Step 4: Each time you check the middle item, you reduce the size of the list you are searching by half.
Step 5: The number of times you can divide the list in half until you reach one item is logarithmic in relation to the size of the list. This is expressed as log base 2 of n, written as log(n).
Step 6: Therefore, the average case time complexity, which describes how the time to find an item grows as the list size increases, is O(log n).
