4 ms·
I dropped out of a not very good program, but even in my time there we did learn that O(N^2) can (and almost certainly will) be faster than O(N) on most archite
by staticassertion 7y ago
I dropped out of a not very good program, but even in my time there we did learn that O(N^2) can (and almost certainly will) be faster than O(N) on most architectures due to data locality and large constants hidden by Big O notation.
I'm not asking this to be snarky, again I'm a dropout and don't have a ton of insight into this sort of thing - do most CS programs not cover this in at least some detail at some point?
- Izkata 7y agoMine not only did not (2006-2010), when the professor was demonstrating something he dropped a constant I knew from prior experience would overpower the big-O in question, then danced around it when I tried to ask about it. Didn't even try to go down the path of "we're focusing on big-O, so we're only ignoring it for this particular analysis", he just pretended the term didn't exist.
- staticassertion 7y agoInteresting, thanks. I suppose it isn't necessarily part of a core curriculum (though I did not make it through the curriculum, which is why I was curious).