Performance Comparison: Finding the Two Smallest Numbers in Ruby

Its time to choice

When working with large datasets in Ruby, choosing the right method to find the two smallest numbers can impact performance. Let’s compare two common approaches:

Using sort.take(2)

• Sorts the entire array first

• Time complexity: O(n log n)

• Simple but inefficient for large arrays

Using min(2)

• Finds the two smallest elements directly

• Time complexity: O(n)

• More efficient, especially for big datasets

For small arrays, both work fine. But with thousands of elements, min(2) is clearly faster as it avoids full sorting.

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