Sometimes, the constant factors in an algorithm's runtime equation are more important thant its growth rate. When the problem is sorting, this can happen in which situation?

When we are sorting lots of small groups of records.
  • When there are lots of records
  • When the CPU is really fast
  • When the amount of available space is small
  • When the records are nearly sorted
  • When the records are nearly reverse sorted

CPU speed would affect all comparisons in the same way.

Records being sorted or reverse sorted affects the growth rate of different algorithms differently. But not relevant to this question.

When we sort only a few records, constants matter a lot.