I'm not going to be handing out degrees based on these. If you mean the utility of the specific questions, the point is that knowing these things is indicative of your general level of knowledge in certain areas.
>knowing these things is indicative of your general level of knowledge in certain areas.
Very possibly. But is knowing the same as remembering? Compare remembering the specific value of quicksort's worst case to knowing that some sort algorithms are better than others when, say, the input is likely to already be sorted, and that you should go crack open CLRS if you dont recall which.
If you can't remember quicksort's average vs. worst cases, odds are that the behaviour of sorting algorithms isn't sufficiently top-of-mind that you'll say "wait, this data might already be sorted! I might need to use a different algorithm here".
Quicksort is usually randomized. So it is not a matter of the order of the elements, it is a matter of very bad luck on selecting your pivots. So even if worst case performance is very bad it is very unlikely. But you have to understand why.
You probably will never implement quicksort, but it is useful to know, how it works, as you may be able to use some of the ideas on your own algorithms. Quicksort is also beautiful, so it can be a good inspiration on writing good software.
