Case Analysis in Data Structure
Worst Case Analysis
In the worst case analysis, we calculate upper bound on running time of an algorithm. We must know the case that causes maximum number of operations to be executed. For Linear Search, the worst case happens when the element to be searched is not present in the array. When x is not present, the search () functions compares it with all the elements of array [] one by one. Therefore, the worst case time complexity of linear search would be.
Average Case Analysis
In average case analysis, we take all possible inputs and calculate computing time for all of the inputs. Sum all the calculated values and divide the sum by total number of inputs. We must know (or predict) distribution of cases. For the linear search problem, let us assume that all cases are uniformly distributed. So we sum all the cases and divide the sum by (n+1).
Best Case Analysis
In the best case analysis, we calculate lower bound on running time of an algorithm. We must know the case that causes minimum number of operations to be executed. In the linear search problem, the best case occurs when x is present at the first location. The number of operations in worst case is constant (not dependent on n). So time complexity in the best case would be.
