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Subject: Re: O(1) garbage

Author: David Rasmussen

Date: 15:14:05 05/15/01

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On May 15, 2001 at 13:02:11, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>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.

Well, several textbooks disagree with you in Big-O not being about asymptotic
behavior, but I'm to tired to go into that now, as I'm sure you know what I
mean, and that we basically do not disagree. Do you want me to elaborate?



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