An insertion sort is a bit of a special case. It assumes that you will be given a set of values over time, and as you get them, you will insert the value into its correct location based upon the given values.

Depending upon the data, and size, you could utilize different types of sort, such as a binary tree so it is automatically sorted as it enters, or bubble sort. 

While normally a bubble sort isn’t considered a good sorting algorithm, it can be very effective for an insertion sort because it’s only checking for the placement of one element, and you can exit the sort once the data is sorted. This can make it relatively fast for insertion sorts, assuming that you are not loading a lot of data at once with it.

This makes sense to sort your data as it’s being inserted, so that it is always sorted when you go to work with it.

Insertion Sort was originally found on Access 2 Learn

Assistant Professor

Walter Wimberly is an Assistant Professor at a regional college in Tennessee, teaching Computer Science in the Software Engineering track. He works as a student advisor, oversees curriculum changes, develops new courses, and manages the advisory panel.
Walter taught full time for about 7 years, before going back into “industry” as a full stack Software Developer for a dozen years. There he focused on web based projects coding in JavaScript/jQuery and utilizing the Bootstrap CSS Framework on the front-end, and coding in PHP, ASP/ASP.Net, SQL on the back-end.

Since he loves teaching, he taught as an adjunct web and digital media classes for eight (8) years, while working in industry, and has since returned to teaching full time.

He has been married for over 25 years, and is father to several special needs boys. As such, he is working on some projects to help others who have special needs to be self-sufficient, and support the care givers of those with special needs. Check out his Autism blog for more info.

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