Question

procedure max (a[1..n]: integers)
    max := a[1]
    for i := 2 to n
        if max < a[i] then max := a[i]

Is the complexity O(1) or O(n) with the best case scenario? The sequence contains n elements. It is pseudocode.

Answer 1

There’s no difference between the best case and worst case asymptotic running times for this algorithm. In all cases, you have to traverse the whole array (n elements) and your algorithm would be O(n).

Theoretically, there’s no way you can find the maximum element of an arbitrary array in less than O(n) since you should always visit each element at least once.