Data Structures and Algorithms in Swift: Implement Stacks, Queues, Dictionaries, and Lists in Your Apps

© Elshad Karimov 2020

E. KarimovData Structures and Algorithms in Swifthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5769-2_13

13. Big O

Elshad Karimov¹ 

(1)

New York, New York, USA

 

To describe the efficiency of algorithms, Big O time language and metric is used. To make it clearer, let’s look at the following scenario. Imagine that we want to send a file to our friend as fast as possible, how should we send it?

There are two options:

• Electronic transfer

• Physical delivery

Time Complexity

The concept of asymptotic runtime or Big O means time complexity . Which means we could describe the data transfer algorithm runtime as follows (Figure 13-1):

• Electronic transfer: O(s), where s is the size of the file. This means that the time to transfer the file increases linearly ...