> So your contention is with the word “always”? It doesn’t always mean worst case? I got told off by someone else for _not_ saying this.
Using "always" is definitely wrong, but that isn't really what makes this wrong. BonoboTP caught another thing that I missed which tells me that you misunderstand some of these concepts on a somewhat fundamental level. Quote:
> You may sometimes see the Greek letter "theta", Θ, instead of the letter O in big O notation. This is used when the best and worst case have the same order of growth. We can't use it for bubble sort because the best case is O(n) and the worst case is O(n^2).
Big O, Ω, and Θ are ways to describe asymptotic bounds on runtime. You can apply them in best, average, or worst case analyses. For example, linear search is O(1), Ω(1), and Θ(1) in the best case but it is O(n), Ω(n), and Θ(n) in the worst case.
> I really just want to find the way of describing this that won’t net me comments like yours. It is very disheartening to spend so much time on something, and really try to do the topic justice, to be met with a torrent of “this is wrong, that’s wrong, this is also wrong.” Please remember I am a human being trying to do my best.
I'm sorry.. but what? You posted some learning material on the web which is wrong. I am just correcting you, and in a civil manner, mind you. I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do. Should we all just pretend that there aren't errors in what you posted so we don't hurt your feelings?