Which sorting algorithm is the most efficient one?

Question

bubblesort? or quicksort or insertionsort?

Answer 1

Depends on how big your data. In general, any sort that achieves O(n*log n) "on average" is considered efficient for sufficiently large data (i.e. n>=1000000). In that case, quicksort wins. Now if you're monkeying around with a few elements (i.e. n=1000), either bubblesort or intersionsort will win.

But efficiency depends on what you want to do and how many elements you're trying to sort. So to help you out, here's a cheat sheet that can help you decide what may/may not be right for you:

http://bigocheatsheet.com/