What is the space complexity of Quick Sort in the worst case?

Practice Questions

Q1
What is the space complexity of Quick Sort in the worst case?
  1. O(1)
  2. O(n)
  3. O(log n)
  4. O(n log n)

Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions

What is the space complexity of Quick Sort in the worst case?
  • Step 1: Understand what space complexity means. It refers to the amount of memory space required by an algorithm as the input size grows.
  • Step 2: Know that Quick Sort is a sorting algorithm that uses recursion to sort elements.
  • Step 3: In Quick Sort, the worst case occurs when the pivot chosen is the smallest or largest element, leading to unbalanced partitions.
  • Step 4: When Quick Sort is called recursively, each call adds to the stack space used by the program.
  • Step 5: In the worst case, the depth of the recursion can go up to n (where n is the number of elements), but this is rare.
  • Step 6: However, on average and in the best case, the depth of recursion is log(n).
  • Step 7: Therefore, the space complexity in the worst case is O(log n) because we consider the maximum depth of the recursive calls.
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