Which of the following sorting methods will be the best, if the number of swappings done, is the only measure of efficiency?

Selection sort is best if efficiency is in terms of swaps. No of the swaps in selection sort is of O(n)

To sort elements in increasing order, selection sort always picks the maximum/minimum element from the remaining unsorted array and swaps it with the last/first element respectively (according to implementation) in the remaining array

Pseudo code of selection sort.

for(i=0;i<n-1;i++)

{

min_idx=i;

for(j=i+i; j<n;><="" p="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">

{

f(a[j] < a[min_idx])

min_idx=j;

}

swap(a[i],a[min_idx]); / only 1 swap each iteration for a total of n-1 iterations

}

Here, the 9^th line in pseudo-code there are in a single for loop and loop will run for the n – 1 time

swap condition in code will execute only n – 1 time.

Number of swaps = θ(n) = O(n).