Let's revisit our first problem, where we want to set up a series of chess matches so we can rank six players in our class. As we did before, we will assume that everyone keeps their chess rating a private secret; however, when two players have a chess match, the person with the higher rating wins 100% of the time. But this time, we are only interested in identifying the BEST of these six players and the WORST of these six players. (We don't care about the relative ordering or ranking of the middle four players.) Your goal is to devise a comparison-based algorithm that is guaranteed to identify the player with the highest rating and the player with the lowest rating. Because you are very strong at Algorithm Design, you know how to do this in the most efficient way. Here are five statements.

A. There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 6 matches, but there does not exist an algorithm using only 5 matches.

B. There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 7 matches, but there does not exist an algorithm using only 6 matches.

C. There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 8 matches, but there does not exist an algorithm using only 7 matches.

D. There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 9 matches, but there does not exist an algorithm using only 8 matches.

E. There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 10 matches, but there does not exist an algorithm using only 9 matches.

Determine which of these five statements is correct. Answer either A, B, C, D, or E.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

The correct statement is A There exists an algorithm to solve this problem using 6 matches but there ... View the full answer