Searching successive elements of an ordered list beginning with the first element is known as a binary search. Select one: True False
The correct answer and explanation is:
The correct answer is False.
A binary search is not about searching successive elements of an ordered list starting from the first element. Instead, it is a search algorithm that works by repeatedly dividing the search interval in half. The key idea is to start with the middle element of the ordered list and compare it with the target value. If the target value is smaller than the middle element, the search continues on the left half of the list; if it is larger, the search continues on the right half. This process repeats until the target value is found or the search interval is empty.
Binary search is efficient because it reduces the search space by half with each comparison. This makes it much faster than linear search, which checks every element one by one. The time complexity of a binary search is O(log n), where n is the number of elements in the list, as opposed to the O(n) time complexity of a linear search.
However, binary search has some requirements. The list must be sorted in either ascending or descending order for the algorithm to work correctly. If the list is not sorted, binary search will not give the correct result. Additionally, binary search is typically implemented on data structures like arrays or lists that allow direct access to elements by their index.
In contrast, searching successive elements from the beginning of an ordered list describes a linear search, where each element is checked sequentially until the target is found. Linear search is simpler but slower for large lists, as it has a time complexity of O(n).