Big-O Notation: Important Notes

Three things to know about Big-O notation.

Answer

  • What matters is the growth rate. Scaling coefficients or shifting terms do not matter. For example, \(0.5n + 100\) is still \(O(n)\).

  • Big-O notation represents a worst-case scenario of operations.

  • The unit of Big-O notation is not seconds (that depends on many things) but the number of elementary operations.

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