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Subject: Re: O(1) garbage

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:02:11 05/15/01

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On May 15, 2001 at 11:54:10, David Rasmussen wrote:

>On May 15, 2001 at 06:35:42, Martin Schubert wrote:
>
>>
>>O(...) is about asymptotical behaviour. If n is bounded, it doesn't make sense
>>to talk about asymptotical behaviour.
>>
>>Martin
>
>Exactly.


not exactly.  O(n) discussions can be asymptotical in nature, if the "bound"
is large enough to be considered infinite.

IE I am _still_ waiting for someone to post a problem description (real-word
problem) that is unbounded in any way.  To date, no one has.  Which means all
real-world problems are O(1) and that definition is _still_ worthless and
pointless.

Big-Oh is _still_ a conceptual way to predict program run-time as the input
is increased in some way.  I posted a direct quote from one theory book
yesterday.  I can post others that make the same statement...

In "theory" this "asymptotic behavior" might make sense.  In practical terms,
it does not, and all the complexity analysis of algorithms, for any real-world
algorithm you name, must be of O(1) which is nonsense to those of us that are
working on algorithms.



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