Question

Find Maximum Experiment with the Find Maximum problem here 1. Describe the strategy for finding the maximum number in a list of 8 items 2. Count the number of comparisons to find the maximum element (number) in a list of 15 items 3.Count the number of comparisons to find the maximum element (number) in a list of 25 items 4. Determine a formula for the number of comparisons to find the maximum number in a list of any size Use the variable n for the number of items in the list Bonus: What is the Big O classification for Finding a Maximum Element

Answer 1

1) We go through the entire list. Anytime we encounter a number larger than the number we think is the maximum, we update the maximum. At the end of the list, we will have our maximum element

2) We compare the first element with all the list elements. So for 15 elements we will need a total of 14 comparisons (no comparison for the first element, it is our automatic maximum)

3) Similarly, we will need 24 comparisons for a list of size 25

4) For n elements, we need n-1 comparisons. In big-O notation, this is O(n)

$\blacksquare$

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