Big O Notations

Big O NotationsWelcome to my Big O Notations tutorial. Big O notations are used to measure how well a computer algorithm scales as the amount of data involved increases. It isn’t however always a measure of speed as you’ll see.

This is a rough overview of Big O and I hope to simplify it rather than get into all of the complexity. I’ll specifically cover the following O(1), O(N), O(N^2), O(log N) and O(N log N). Between the video and code below I hope everything is completely understandable.

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Code From the Video

Big O Notations

23 thoughts on “Big O Notations”

  1. Thanks Derek. Great video as usual. I have a problem. Can you please help me ?
    I need to extract text from 3rd-party applications. Something like when I chat on yahoo messenger, I need to extract the text and display it on my own application.

    I know it’s outside of this tutorial but can you please help ? thank you thank you thank you 🙂

      1. Hi Derek, I don’t know anything about Microsoft UI Automation API and it’s not easy to learn. But thanks anyway. Have a nice day

  2. Hi Derek,

    Geat presentation. This video is really helpful however your a liitle bit fast but you teach very well. Maybe in your next presentation hoping you can do itlittle bit slower it ok with you, if not it’s fine too.

    Anaway, I did try your code but I’m getting error with static time long variables. “Illegal modifier for parameter starTime and endTime. Do you have any idea?

    Thanks,
    Anthony

    1. Thank you 🙂 I’m trying to make the videos as understandable as possible while also keeping them from getting boring. You may have noticed that I have recently slowed down a bit.

      As per the error, there must be a typo some place. I noticed you typed starTime instead of startTime? You often see that error when you try to set visibility scopes (private, protected, etc) for local variables. I hope that helps

  3. Hi Derek,

    Very good video and providing good ontroduction to Big O notation.
    Thanks you very much for posting the video.

    Thanks,
    Venkat.

  4. Hi Derek!

    I just wanted to review important lessons from my Data Structure class and your video taught me a lot of new things I didn’t knew.

    Great video, I hoped my Data Structure professor would give the right name for this topic when he introduced the class to measure how an algorithm scales.

  5. Hi Derek,
    I have not gone back to school in 10 years! And I have been working in the tech industry for a while now…These videos of yours are just amazing and i wish my profs at school had taught with such enthusiasm. I have decided to study every day a little bit to keep myself in tune with the basics of Computer Science! Thanks and pls keep posting these!

  6. hi derek, may i ask about log(n!) as well as notations of exponential time. e.g. is 2^n+1 the same as 2^n

    Regards

  7. Hi Derek,

    Big fan of your tutorials. One of my prof at college for design pattern course used to play your video in the class. Your video was more clear then prof’s lecture.

  8. Hey Derek,

    I am looking for a tutor. I was hoping I could find someone online. I understand your videos really well. Do you think you could help?

    SCHOW

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