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Big O notation is a mathematical notation that describes the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity. Big O is a member of a family of notations invented by German mathematicians Paul Bachmann, [1] Edmund Landau, [2] and others, collectively called Bachmann–Landau notation or asymptotic notation.
Asymptotic analysis is a key tool for exploring the ordinary and partial differential equations which arise in the mathematical modelling of real-world phenomena. [3] An illustrative example is the derivation of the boundary layer equations from the full Navier-Stokes equations governing fluid flow.
It is a term commonly encountered in computer science research as a result of widespread use of big-O notation. More formally, an algorithm is asymptotically optimal with respect to a particular resource if the problem has been proven to require Ω(f(n)) of that resource, and the algorithm has been proven to use only O(f(n)).
With respect to computational resources, asymptotic time complexity and asymptotic space complexity of computational algorithms and programs are commonly estimated. Other asymptotically estimated behavior include circuit complexity and various measures of parallel computation , such as the number of (parallel) processors.
In computer science (specifically computational complexity theory), the worst-case complexity measures the resources (e.g. running time, memory) that an algorithm requires given an input of arbitrary size (commonly denoted as n in asymptotic notation). It gives an upper bound on the resources required by the algorithm.
In formal mathematics, rates of convergence and orders of convergence are often described comparatively using asymptotic notation commonly called "big O notation," which can be used to encompass both of the prior conventions; this is an application of asymptotic analysis.
Algorithmic complexities are classified according to the type of function appearing in the big O notation. For example, an algorithm with time complexity O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} is a linear time algorithm and an algorithm with time complexity O ( n α ) {\displaystyle O(n^{\alpha })} for some constant α > 0 {\displaystyle \alpha >0} is a ...
See big O notation for an explanation of the notation used. Note: Due to the variety of multiplication algorithms, M ( n ) {\displaystyle M(n)} below stands in for the complexity of the chosen multiplication algorithm.