Sorting Algorithm

Sorting

Sorting is the act of arranging items in a collection in ascending or descending order. The sorting algorithm arranges data to make searching easier. First, let’s look at the visual illustration to understand the concept of sorting.

Let’s look at the most efficient type of sorting.

Counting sort

The counting sort is the most basic and efficient sorting method. A predefined range of data is required for counting sort.

Example

Let’s suppose we have to sort the number of persons in each age group. For example, we know that people’s ages can range from 1 to 130. Therefore, we can directly store counts in an array of size 130.

The time complexity of the counting sort algorithm is $O(n+k)$ if we know the largest element in the input range. Here, n is the number of elements, and k is the largest number in the input set.

Note: The counting sort is not appropriate for a large dataset range.