August 2020
Intermediate to advanced
508 pages
11h 53m
English
book
A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms, Second Edition, 2nd Edition
by Jay Wengrow
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O(log N) Explained
Let’s bring this all back to Big O Notation. In computer science, whenever we say O(log N), it’s actually shorthand for saying O(log2 N). We just omit that small 2 for convenience.
Recall that Big O Notation resolves the key question: if there are N data elements, how many steps will the algorithm take?
O(log N) means that for N data elements, the algorithm would take log2 N steps. If there are 8 elements, the algorithm would take three steps, since log2 8 = 3.
Said another way, if we keep dividing the 8 elements in half, it would take us three steps until we end up with 1 element.
This is exactly what happens with binary search. As we search for a particular item, we keep dividing the array’s cells in half until we narrow ...
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