I think there's a formatting miscommunication here. The person you're replying to meant going from n^2 -> n^1.5, which isn't just a linear speedup. E.g. proces

I think there's a formatting miscommunication here. The person you're replying to meant going from n^2 -> n^1.5, which isn't just a linear speedup. E.g. processing 1000 elements with an n^2 algorithm requires a million operations, with n^1.5 only ~31.5k. Processing a million elements goes from a trillion ops to a billion, a 1000x improvement.