Unsorted Lists vs Linear and Binary Search
For solving these types of questions, it is simply necessary to see where you'd spend more time. For a million elements:

Insertion sort with 'n' inversions would take O(n) and then it would take an additional O(log(n)) time.
Whereas linear search would take only O(n) time.

Since there is only a single query method 1 would be a better alternative but for multiple queries(search element in the list) there will be a point where bin-srch*x<lin-srch*x where x is the  number of queries.
Hey guys so I've been studying for an upcoming test and I came across this question:

If you had an unsorted list of one million unique items, and knew that you would only search it once for a value, which of the following algorithms would be the fastest?

Use linear search on the unsorted list
Use insertion sort to sort the list and then binary search on the sorted list


Wouldn't the second choice be the fastest? Sorting the list and then looking for the value than only using linear search?