You have decided to use Quicksort to sort a list. What benefits will you have over MergeSort?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Exploring the question about Quicksort versus MergeSort, we evaluate each possible benefit to understand which one truly applies.
Option a: 'It is incremental' — This is not a standard way to describe Quicksort. Quicksort is a divide-and-conquer algorithm that sorts by partitioning and recursively sorting subarrays; it is not typically characterized as incremental in the sense of producing results piece by piece in an easily observable, monotonic fashion. This makes the statement misleading as a core benefit.
Option b: 'It has a worst-case time complexity of O(nlogn)' — While Quicksort can achieve O(n log n) on average, its worst-case time complexity is O(n^2), which occurs when the pivot selection leads to highly unbalanced partitions (e.g., already sorted data with a poor pivot choice). Therefore, this option is false as stated, since it ignores the critical caveat about worst case.
Option c: 'It is stable' — Stability means equal elements preserve their relative order after sorting. Quicksort is not inherently stable; many implementations can be unstable unless specifically designed to be stable (which adds overhead). Thus this claim is incorrect as a general property of Quicksort.
Option d: 'It offers in-place sorting and so does not require a lot of space to perform' — This is a well-known advantage of Quicksort: it sorts in place using a small, constant amount of extra space for recursion stack and a few indices, unlike MergeSort which typically requires additional space for merging subarrays. Therefore, this statement accurately captures a true benefit of Quicksort over MergeSort.
In summary, option d correctly identifies a genuine benefit of using Quicksort: in-place sorting with relatively small auxiliary space, while the other options either misstate a property or describe a characteristic that is not inherent to Quicksort in a general sense.

FIT1008-FIT1054-FIT2085_S2_2025 Week 10 Workshop Quiz

You have decided to use Quicksort to sort a list. What benefits will you have over MergeSort?

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