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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Teaching sorts [was Re: What's the best language to start with?]
Date: 1996/08/22
Message-ID: <dewar.840758698@schonberg>#1/1
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organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-08-22T00:00:00+00:00
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Szu-Wen says

"I understand your point, and I agree with you in the strictest technical
sense.  However, it doesn't help at all if you tell somebody your
algorithm is O(n) when it's actually O(1000n) in a certain range of
n.  Think about it - what do we use time complexity for?  To predict
behavior as n increases from our test case (usually smaller) to our
real case (usually bigger).  If the statement of the algorithm does not
make it obvious that f(x) in O(f(x)) is not a continuous function, I
believe it is the failing of the statement."

O(n) is the same as O(1000n). I trust this is clear to you now if you
have followed this thread.

If you naively use big-O notation to predict behavior, you will get into
trouble!