The document discusses three elementary sorting algorithms: selection sort, insertion sort, and bubble sort. It explains their basic mechanisms, provides examples, and analyzes their time complexities. Selection sort and bubble sort have a worst-case time complexity of O(n2) because they require iterating through the entire array multiple times. Insertion sort's worst-case is also O(n2) as it may require shifting over elements each iteration. The document then introduces the idea of divide and conquer algorithms like merge sort which can achieve optimal O(n log n) time complexity.