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Sorting Algorithms — Bubble, Insertion & Merge Sort

Understand how key sorting algorithms work, compare their efficiency using Big-O notation, and learn when to use each one.

📚 Learning Steps

💡 Study Tips

• Read through at your own pace
• Try the interactive simulators hands-on
• Study the pseudocode — it appears in exams
• Quiz yourself before moving on

Step 1: Why Sorting Matters

📖 Theory

Sorting is one of the most fundamental operations in computer science. Efficient searching (e.g. binary search) requires data to be sorted first.

Different sorting algorithms have different trade-offs in terms of speed, memory usage, and whether they maintain the relative order of equal elements (stability).

At A-Level you need to know three comparison-based sorting algorithms: Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, and Merge Sort.

🎯 Key Points

•Sorting arranges data into a defined order (ascending / descending)
•Efficient searching algorithms like binary search REQUIRE sorted data
•Different algorithms have different time and space complexity trade-offs
•You must know Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, and Merge Sort for the exam

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