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A visual introduction to big O notation

(samwho.dev)
688 points samwho | 6 comments | 24 Aug 25 07:39 UTC | HN request time: 1.104s | source | bottom
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laurent_du ◴[25 Aug 25 18:29 UTC] No.45017202[source]▶
Beautiful article but that's not what big O means. The author seems to be describing something that is usually called (upper case) Theta. Big O is an upper bound.
replies(2): >>45017463 #>>45017525 #
1. samwho ◴[25 Aug 25 18:52 UTC] No.45017525[source]▶
There's a comment thread further down that disagrees with you.
replies(2): >>45017669 #>>45017981 #
2. umanwizard ◴[25 Aug 25 19:05 UTC] No.45017669[source]▶
...where?
replies(1): >>45017873 #
3. samwho ◴[25 Aug 25 19:25 UTC] No.45017873[source]▶
Ah, I conflated worst case with upper bound. My mistake.
replies(1): >>45019214 #
4. laurent_du ◴[25 Aug 25 19:34 UTC] No.45017981[source]▶
I am not interested in arguing so I'll just repeat that your article is beautiful and even though it's not entirely correct I think it has value and I appreciate the time you spent working on this and putting it out to help others.
replies(1): >>45018489 #
5. samwho ◴[25 Aug 25 20:18 UTC] No.45018489[source]▶
Thank you, I appreciate that a lot.
6. ◴[25 Aug 25 21:24 UTC] No.45019214{3}[source]▶