3 ms·

Physicists and engineers think about things like that all the time (e.g. "gravity dies off like 1/r^2"), so I'd guess it was just a physics idea that got applie

• schoen 4y ago
  A somewhat surprisingly modern thing about Pocklington's observation is that he treats all polynomials as equivalent for his purposes: > the labour required here is proportional to a power of the logarithm of the modulus, not to the modulus itself or its square root as in the indirect processes, and hence see that in the case of a large modulus the direct process will be much quicker than the indirect Specifically, he's pointing out that asymptotically any power of the logarithm of n will be smaller than a constant times n. Physicists also naturally know about asymptotic comparisons, but the "this algorithm asymptotically beats that algorithm because it's (log n)^k₁ vs. k₂*n" is pretty darn similar to the way we think about this today!
  • Jensson 4y ago
    No, he meant physicists works exactly like that to find the form of equations and what to ignore, like what a field looks like in near distance or long distance etc, it isn't a new style of thinking at all. Its a part of higher level courses and its over a century old at least since it applies to energy transportation in fields etc.
    • schoen 4y ago
      Something like dimensional analysis?