Big O Notation/Time Complexity - Space Complexity

Andrés Bedoya G.

Social Engineering Specialist / Social Analyzer / Web Developer / Hardcore JavaScript Developer / Python - Nodejs enthusiastic

Big O Notation

WARNING

This section contains some math

Don't worry, we'll survive

Big O Notation

Imagine we have multiple implementations of the same function.

 

How can we determine which one is the "best"?

Big O Notation

Suppose we want to write a function that calculates the sum of all numbers from 1 up to (and including) some number n.

function addUpTo(n) {
  let total = 0;
  for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
    total += i;
  }
  return total;
}
function addUpTo(n) {
  return n * (n + 1) / 2;
}

Which one is better?

Big O Notation

  addUpTo(n) =    1    +    2    +    3    + ... + (n - 1) +    n   
+ addUpTo(n) =    n    + (n - 1) + (n - 2) + ... +    2    +    1   
  2addUpTo(n) = (n + 1) + (n + 1) + (n + 1) + ... + (n + 1) + (n + 1)

n copies

2addUpTo(n) = n * (n + 1)
addUpTo(n) = n * (n + 1) / 2

Big O Notation

function addUpTo(n) {
  let total = 0;
  for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
    total += i;
  }
  return total;
}

let t1 = performance.now();
addUpTo(1000000000);
let t2 = performance.now();
console.log(`Time Elapsed: ${(t2 - t1) / 1000} seconds.`)

Timers...

Big O Notation

If not time, then what?

Rather than counting seconds, which are so variable...

Let's count the number of simple operations the computer has to perform!

Big O Notation

Counting Operations

function addUpTo(n) {
  return n * (n + 1) / 2;
}

3 simple operations, regardless of the size of n

1 multiplication

1 addition

1 division

Big O Notation

Counting Operations

function addUpTo(n) {
  let total = 0;
  for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
    total += i;
  }
  return total;
}

n additions

n assignments

n additions and

n assignments

1 assignment

1 assignment

n comparisions

????

Big O Notation

Big O Notation is a way to formalize fuzzy counting

It allows us to talk formally about how the runtime of an algorithm grows as the inputs grow

Big O Notation

We say that an algorithm is O(f(n)) if the number of simple operations the computer has to do is eventually less than a constant times f(n), as n increases

  • f(n) could be linear (f(n) = n)
  • f(n) could be quadratic (f(n) = n2)
  • f(n) could be constant (f(n) = 1)
  • f(n) could be something entirely different!

Big O Notation

function addUpTo(n) {
  return n * (n + 1) / 2;
}

Always 3 operations

O(1)

function addUpTo(n) {
  let total = 0;
  for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
    total += i;
  }
  return total;
}

Number of operations is (eventually) bounded by a multiple of n (say, 10n)

O(n)

Big O Notation

O(2n)

O(500)

O(13n2)

O(n)

O(1)

O(n2)

Big O Notation

function countUpAndDown(n) {
  console.log("Going up!");
  for (let i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    console.log(i);
  }
  console.log("At the top!\nGoing down...");
  for (let j = n - 1; j >= 0; j--) {
    console.log(j);
  }
  console.log("Back down. Bye!");
}

O(n)

O(n)

Number of operations is (eventually) bounded by a multiple of n (say, 2n)

O(n)

Big O Notation

function printAllPairs(n) {
  for (var i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    for (var j = 0; j < n; j++) {
      console.log(i, j);
    }
  }
}

O(n)

O(n)

O(n) operation inside of an O(n) operation.

O(n * n)

O(n2)

Big O Notation

  • Arithmetic operations are constant
  • Variable assignment is constant
  • Accessing elements in an array (by index) or object (by key) is constant
  • In a loop, the complexity is the length of the loop times the complexity of whatever happens inside of the loop

Big O Notation

Big O Notation

Big O of Objects
- Insertion - O(1)
- Removal - O(1)
- Updating O(1)
- Searching - O(N)
- Access - O(1)

Big O of Object Methods

- Object.keys - O(N)
- Object.values - O(N)
- Object.entries - O(N)
- hasOwnProperty - O(1)

Big O of Arrays
- Insertion - It depends
- Removal - It depends
- Searching - O(N)
- Access - O(N)

Big O of Array Methods

- push - O(1)
- pop - O(1)
- shift - O(N)
- unshift - O(N)
- concat - O(N)
- slice - O(N)
- splice - O(N)
- sort - O(N * log N)
- forEach/map/filter/reduce/etc. - O(N)

Space Complexity

So far, we've been focusing on time complexity: how can we analyze the runtime of an algorithm as the size of the inputs increases?

We can also use big O notation to analyze space complexity: how much additional memory do we need to allocate in order to run the code in our algorithm?

Space Complexity

  • Most primitives (booleans, numbers, undefined, null) are constant space
  • Strings require O(n) space (where n is the string length)
  • Reference types are generally O(n), where n is the length (for arrays) or the number of keys (for objects)

Space Complexity

function sum(arr) {
  let total = 0;
  for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
    total += arr[i];
  }
  return total;
}

one number

another number

O(1) Space

Space Complexity

function double(arr) {
  let newArr = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
    newArr.push(2 * arr[i]);
  }
  return newArr;
}

n numbers

O(n) Space

Recap

  • To analyze the performance of an algorithm, we use Big O Notation
  • Big O Notation can give us a high level understanding of the time or space complexity of an algorithm
  • Big O Notation doesn't care about precision, only about general trends (linear? quadratic? constant?)
  • The time or space complexity (as measured by Big O) depends only on the algorithm, not the hardware used to run the algorithm
  • Big O Notation is everywhere, so get lots of practice!

More info

Big O Notation

By Andrés BG

Big O Notation

Big O Notation/Time Complexity - Space Complexity

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