3 ms·

A personal favorite of my in the use of big-O where a short phrase involving the words "exponential", "linear" or "constant" would have sufficed, and been compr

by ashark 12y ago

A personal favorite of my in the use of big-O where a short phrase involving the words "exponential", "linear" or "constant" would have sufficed, and been comprehensible to any humanities major who didn't sleep through math in junior high.

Ar-Curunir 12y ago
But Big-O does transmit useful information that is not captured by 'constant', 'linear' and 'exponential'. Quadratic time doesn't fall into your categorization, nor does O(n \log n) time. Technical jargon exists for a reason, and that reason is that it is precise and specific. It conveys exactly what it means, no more and no less. Dumbing down terminology so that everyone can understand it is a poor tradeoff if said terminology becomes vague and thereby loses meaning.
- sp332 12y ago
  GP said use of big-O where a short phrase ... would have sufficed. That's pretty common, with people throwing around O(1) and O(n).
  - ashark 12y ago
    Precisely what I meant. In those cases its use serves little purpose save as a shibboleth.
vilhelm_s 12y ago
I rather doubt that a majority of humanities majors understand "exponential" or "linear" either...
- Someone 12y ago
  Or the fine details of "constant" as a synonym for O(1). I guess those having some sense for "exponential" would be surprised to hear that "constant" can be way larger than "exponential". It's like explaining infinities (examples: there are as many odd integers as integers; 0.99999... is equal to 1)