Time Complexity

Definitions

1. A measure of how an algorithm's running time grows as the input size increases, expressed in Big-O notation — for example, O(n) means linear growth, O(n²) means quadratic, and O(log n) means logarithmic.

   In plain English: A way of describing how much slower an algorithm gets as you give it more data to process.

   Example: "That nested loop gives you O(n²) time complexity — at 100K records it'll take minutes instead of milliseconds."

Related Terms

• Allocator
• Backtracking
• Big-O
• Binary Tree
• Cache
• Hash Table
• Optimization
• Order of Magnitude