A List of Colors and Binary Search: Finding Indigo Position

A list of colors is searched for indigo using binary search.

Colors list: { blue gold green indigo magenta ochre orange tan teal yellow }

A. Indigo is the third color in the list.

B. Indigo is the fourth color in the list.

C. Indigo is the fifth color in the list.

D. Indigo is not present in the list.

Final answer:

The position of 'indigo' in the list is determined using a binary search, which reveals that b. it is the fourth color on the provided list.

Explanation:

The student is asking about performing a binary search on a sorted list of colors to find the position of 'indigo'. The list provided is { blue gold green indigo magenta ochre orange tan teal yellow }. The correct answer to where 'indigo' is located in the list can be found by following the steps of a binary search algorithm:

1. First, we find the middle of the list. There are 10 items, so the middle falls between 'indigo' and 'magenta'.
2. Since we are looking for 'indigo' and the list is in alphabetical order, we can ignore the second half of the list (items after 'indigo').
3. Now looking at the first half { blue gold green indigo }, 'indigo' is the last item in this sub-list and thus the fourth item in the original list.

Therefore, the correct answer to the student's question is 'Indigo is the fourth color in the list,' or option B.