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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.
This is often written symbolically as f (n) ~ n 2, which is read as "f(n) is asymptotic to n 2". An example of an important asymptotic result is the prime number theorem. Let π(x) denote the prime-counting function (which is not directly related to the constant pi), i.e. π(x) is the number of prime numbers that are less than or equal to x.
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)).
where big-O notation is used, ... gives the asymptotic formula for the coefficients: ... This is an example of an asymptotic expansion.
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.
For example, since the run-time of insertion sort grows quadratically as its input size increases, insertion sort can be said to be of order O(n 2). Big O notation is a convenient way to express the worst-case scenario for a given algorithm, although it can also be used to express the average-case — for example, the worst-case scenario for ...
Big O notation is an asymptotic measure of function complexity, where () = (()) roughly means the time requirement for an algorithm is proportional to (), omitting lower-order terms that contribute less than () to the growth of the function as grows arbitrarily large.
Asymptotic analysis: a method of describing limiting behavior Big O notation: used to describe the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity; Banach limit defined on the Banach space that extends the usual limits. Convergence of random variables; Convergent matrix