> a totally different issue is that big-o notation doesn't always narrow down where the bottleneck is even if you calculate it correctly because n is never arbi

> a totally different issue is that big-o notation doesn't always narrow down where the bottleneck is even if you calculate it correctly because n is never arbitrarily large and so the bottleneck depends on the constant factors Yeah I think this is part of my point, in that theoretical best, average and worst case scenarios can be useful in isolation but rarely tell the whole story. In the worst case, every word is unique and is equal to word count and it's a standard sorting issue.