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Complexity Analysis of Algorithms

Lars Vogel

Version 0.2

31.08.2009

Revision History
Revision 0.118.07.2009Lars Vogel
Created Article
Revision 0.231.08.2009Lars Vogel
Added description

Complexity Analysis

The following article describes the theoretical background on evaluating the performance of algorithms and programs.


Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Big O notations
3. Thank you
4. Questions and Discussion
5. Links and Literature
5.1. Source Code
5.2. Resources
5.3. vogella Resources

1. Introduction

Choosing the fastest algorithm for a certain task require that that you can estimate the runtime of an algorithm.

The absolute runtime of an algorithm is determined by several things, for example:

  • The Hardware it is running upon

  • The programming language your are using

  • The compiler / runtime environment you are using

All these factors influence the actual runtime of a algorithm.

To compare the runtime behavior of algorithms is is important to have a mean to eliminate all these factors and to find a common description of the runtime.