Assess students' ability to analyze and compare time and space complexity, stability, and practical performance of quicksort, mergesort, heapsort, and Timsort across input distributions (random, sorted, reverse, few-unique). Require explanation of pivot/merge/heap strategies, in-place vs auxiliary memory, average/worst/best-case behavior, adaptivity (e.g., Timsort's run detection), and interpretation of empirical benchmarks to justify algorithm selection and trade-offs.