Question

________ is a search technique that makes use of the ordering of elements in the list to quickly search for a key.

• A. Linear Search
• B. Binary Search
• C. Hashing
• D. Bubble Search

Hint:

Prerequisite for Binary Search: The input collection must be sorted.
Time complexity: \(O(\log n)\).

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Concept:
Searching algorithms locate the position of an item within a collection.
Some search techniques can work on arbitrary unsorted collections, whereas others rely fundamentally on the sorted order of elements to accelerate search time.

Step 1: Mechanism of Binary Search:
Binary search relies strictly on the sorted sequence of the elements.
Because the list is ordered, comparing the key to the middle element determines whether the target lies in the left half or the right half.
This eliminates half of the remaining elements in each step, reducing the search space exponentially.

Step 2: Evaluating the Distractors:
- Linear search sequentially checks items without relying on or benefiting from element ordering.
- Hashing computes an index directly using a mathematical hash function, without using list ordering.
- Bubble search is not a standard search technique (Bubble Sort is a sorting algorithm).
Final Answer:
Binary search is the algorithm that leverages list ordering to achieve efficient searches. Thus, option (B) is correct.