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The game he was playing was "become a billionaire." I was a member of the protected class in the Apple-Pixar-Google etc case. When I left, I got a 50% raise. I

The game he was playing was "become a billionaire." I was a member of the protected class in the Apple-Pixar-Google etc case. When I left, I got a 50% raise. I estimate that that collusion cost O(10,000) people between $50,000 and $500,000 each (my settlement was less than $10K, and my personal loss was ~$40,000/yr * 5 years). Given that Ben is discussing executives here, let's say: O(1,000) people what, $100,000 to $1,000,000 each?

gammateam 8y ago
Thats insightful why are you using big O notation?
- pianoben 8y ago
  I often see this used informally as shorthand for "on the order of", which is another way people say "approximately".
  - uiri 8y ago
    "on the order of" is not synonymous with "approximately" "on the order of" 1000000 means any number from 1000001 through 9999999 I would expect "approximately" to mean accurate to within the next order of magnitude down. e.g. I would expect "approximately 500000" to mean a range of 400000 to 600000; maybe 350000 to 650000 if you're stretching it.
    - palunon 8y ago
      > "on the order of" 1000000 means any number from 1000001 through 9999999 Not exactly. It can also mean anything from 500,000 to 4,999,999, or 316,228 to 3,162,277... See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude But yeah, it doesn't mean approximately
- bla2 8y ago
  It's because the notation is pronounced "order of", which is also the vocabulary used when you do Fermi estimation: you don't care about exact numbers, but you want to guess the order of magnitude / power of ten correctly. It's linguistic overloading if you want.
- alanh 8y ago
  People, please stop downvoting this reasonable question
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  You shouldn't have been downvoted for that, it's a perfectly reasonable question. I had the same question myself. Here's the funny part: there is no such thing as O(10,000) in big O notation. Big O doesn't concern itself with constant factors, it's about how performance changes with the size of the dataset. If two algorithms run in constant time but one takes twice as long as the other (maybe it's a debug build), they aren't O(1) and O(2), they are both O(1). So it's not surprising that anyone would be confused by O(10,000). In big O, this would be an impossible value. It just wouldn't make sense. The best solution, as always, is to use plain English. You will never go wrong by saying "about 10,000".
  - palunon 8y ago
    Formally, the Landeau notation allows for O(10,000)... But 1 = O(10,000) and 10,000 = O(1), so there is relatively little use for writing anything other than O(1).

gammateam 8y ago

Thats insightful why are you using big O notation?

pianoben 8y ago
I often see this used informally as shorthand for "on the order of", which is another way people say "approximately".
- uiri 8y ago
  "on the order of" is not synonymous with "approximately" "on the order of" 1000000 means any number from 1000001 through 9999999 I would expect "approximately" to mean accurate to within the next order of magnitude down. e.g. I would expect "approximately 500000" to mean a range of 400000 to 600000; maybe 350000 to 650000 if you're stretching it.
  - palunon 8y ago
    > "on the order of" 1000000 means any number from 1000001 through 9999999 Not exactly. It can also mean anything from 500,000 to 4,999,999, or 316,228 to 3,162,277... See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude But yeah, it doesn't mean approximately
bla2 8y ago
It's because the notation is pronounced "order of", which is also the vocabulary used when you do Fermi estimation: you don't care about exact numbers, but you want to guess the order of magnitude / power of ten correctly. It's linguistic overloading if you want.
alanh 8y ago
People, please stop downvoting this reasonable question
Stratoscope 8y ago
You shouldn't have been downvoted for that, it's a perfectly reasonable question. I had the same question myself. Here's the funny part: there is no such thing as O(10,000) in big O notation. Big O doesn't concern itself with constant factors, it's about how performance changes with the size of the dataset. If two algorithms run in constant time but one takes twice as long as the other (maybe it's a debug build), they aren't O(1) and O(2), they are both O(1). So it's not surprising that anyone would be confused by O(10,000). In big O, this would be an impossible value. It just wouldn't make sense. The best solution, as always, is to use plain English. You will never go wrong by saying "about 10,000".
- palunon 8y ago
  Formally, the Landeau notation allows for O(10,000)... But 1 = O(10,000) and 10,000 = O(1), so there is relatively little use for writing anything other than O(1).