1. A computer system for reducing unnecessary processing cycles comprising: one or more computer processors; one or more computer-readable storage medium; and program instructions stored on at least one of the one or more computer-readable storage medium for execution by at least one of the one or more processors, the program instructions comprising: program instructions to select a subset of a dataset; program instructions to identify a number “n,” wherein the “n” is an input set size of the subset of the dataset; program instructions to sample the dataset at intervals, wherein the intervals are calculated as element indices from a beginning and an end of the dataset based on a base number raised to a power that covers 0 to “n”; program instructions to determine whether the subset of a dataset is sorted; program instructions to determine a sign of difference between a first data and a second data, wherein the sign of difference is based on one of the following: the second data is more than the first data, the second data is equal to the first data, and the second data is less than the first data, wherein the sign of difference is between adjacent values in the dataset; program instructions to determine a sort direction from a first data and a second data in the subset of the dataset, wherein the sort direction is based on the determined sign of difference; program instructions to determine a sign of difference between the first data and a third data; program instructions to determine a sort direction from the first data and the third data in the subset of the dataset; program instructions to determine whether the dataset is sorted by determining whether the sort direction from the first data and the third data conforms to the sort direction from the first data and the second data; responsive to determining that the subset of the data is not sorted, program instructions to sort the dataset; and program instructions to process the dataset.