Find top N elements in an Array

Question

What would be the best solution to find top N (say 10) elements in an unordered list (of say 100).

The solution which came in my head was to 1. sort it using quick s

Answer 1

The time could be reduced to linear time:

1. Use the selection algorithm, which effectively find the k-th element in a un-sorted array in linear time. You can either use a variant of quick sort or more robust algorithms.

2. Get the top k using the pivot got in step 1.