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Four Asysmptotic Notations

asympotic notation notes

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Rahul mandal
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17 views

Four Asysmptotic Notations

asympotic notation notes

Uploaded by

Rahul mandal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1. Asymptotic Notations

The main idea of asymptotic analysis is to have a measure of efficiency of algorithms


that doesn’t depend on machine specific constants, and doesn’t require algorithms to
be implemented and time taken by programs to be compared. Asymptotic notations
are mathematical tools to represent time complexity of algorithms for asymptotic
analysis. The following three asymptotic notations are mostly used to represent time
complexity of algorithms.

1.1. The Big O Notation:


The Big O notation defines an upper bound of an algorithm, it bounds
a function only from above. For example, consider the case of
Insertion Sort. It takes linear time in best case and quadratic time in
worst case. We can safely say that the time complexity of Insertion
sort is O(n2). Note that O(n2) also covers linear time.

The Big O notation is useful when we only have upper bound on time
complexity of an algorithm. Many times we easily find an upper bound
by simply looking at the algorithm.

For a given function g(n), we denote by O(g(n)) the set of functions.

O(g(n)) = { f(n): there exist positive constants c and n 0, such that 0 ≤ f(n)≤ c×g(n) for
all n ≥ n0}

Example 7.1:
f(n) = 2n + 3

2n + 3 ≤ 10 n ∀ n ≥ 1
Here, c=10, n0=1, g(n)=n
=> f(n) = O(n)

Also, 2n + 3 ≤ 2 n + 3n
2n + 3 ≤ 5 n ∀ n ≥ 1

And, 2n + 3 ≤ 2n2 + 3n2


2n + 3 ≤ 5n2
=> f(n) = O(n2)

O(1) < O(log n) < O(√ n) < O(n) < O(n log n) < O(n2) < O(n3) < O(2n) < O(3n) < O(nn)
1.2. The Omega (Ω) notation:

Just as Big O notation provides an asymptotic upper bound on


a function, Ω notation provides an asymptotic lower bound.

Ω notation can be useful when we have lower bound on time


complexity of an algorithm. As discussed in the previously, the
best case performance of an algorithm is generally not useful,
the omega notation is the least used notation among all three.

For a given function g(n), we denote by Ω(g(n)) the set of


functions.

Ω (g(n)) = { f(n): there exist positive constants c and n0 such that 0 ≤ c×g(n) ≤ f(n) for
all n ≥ n0 }.

Let us consider the same insertion sort example here. The time complexity of insertion
sort can be written as Ω(n), but it is not a very useful information about insertion sort,
as we are generally interested in worst case and sometimes in average case.

Example 7.2:
f(n) = 2n + 3

2n + 3 ≥ n ∀ n ≥ 1
Here, c=1, n0=1, g(n)=n
=> f(n) = Ω(n)
Also, f(n) = Ω(log n)
f(n) = Ω(√n)

1.3. The Theta (Θ) notation:

The theta notation bounds a functions from above and below,


so it defines the exact asymptotic behaviour. A simple way to
get theta notation of an expression is to drop low order terms
and ignore leading constants. For example, consider the
following expression.

3n3 + 6n2 + 6000 = Θ(n3)

Dropping lower order terms is always fine because there will always be a n0 after which
Θ(n3) has higher values than Θ(n2) irrespective of the constants involved. For a given
function g(n), we denote Θ(g(n)) as the following set of functions.

Θ(g(n)) = {f(n): there exist positive constants c1, c2 and n0 such that 0 ≤ c1×g(n) ≤
f(n) ≤ c2×g(n) for all n ≥ n0}
The above definition means, if f(n) is theta of g(n), then the value f(n) is always
between c1×g(n) and c2×g(n) for large values of n (n ≥ n0). The definition of theta also
requires that f(n) must be non-negative for values of n greater than n0.

Example 7.4:
f(n) = 2n + 3

1 * n ≤ 2n + 3 ≤ 5n ∀ n ≥ 1
Here, c1=1, c2 = 5, n0=1, g(n)=n
=> f(n) = Θ(n)

Example 7.5:
f(n) = 2n2 + 3n + 4
2n2 + 3n + 4 ≤ 2n2 + 3n2 + 4n2
2n2 + 3n + 4 ≤ 9n2
f(n) = O (n2)

also, 2n2 + 3n + 4 ≥ 1 * n2
f(n) = Ω (n2)

=> 1 * n2 ≤ 2n2 + 3n + 4 ≤ 9n2 ∀ n ≥ 1


Here, c1=1, c2 = 9, n0=1, g(n)= n2
=> f(n) = Θ(n2)

Example 7.6:
f(n) = n2 log n + n
n2 log n ≤ n2 log n + n ≤ 10 n2 log n
Ω (n2 log n) Θ(n2 log n) O(n2 log n)

Example 7.7:
f(n) = n!
=1×2×3×4×…×n
1×1×1×…×1≤1×2×3×4×…×n ≤ n×n×n×…×n
1 ≤ n! ≤ nn
Ω (1) O (nn) ( Here we cannot find the average or tight bound Θ)

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