Thread:Mathmagician/@comment-3562424-20121121052230/@comment-4674838-20121122062350

For comparison sorts, $$O(nlogn)$$ is actually the fastest time you can get. A comparison sort is where you can only sort items by comparing them to each other one at a time with <, > or == operations. Most sorts fall under the category of comparison sorts.

There do exist non-comparison sorts like Bucket sort which are faster and can be essentially linear time $$O(n)$$. The catch being that not every data type can be bucket sorted, it's a special case that only works on certain types of data where you have extra information available beyond the <, >, == operations.