INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

Data Structures
CSN- 102

Dr. R. Balasubramanian
Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Roorkee 247 667
balarfcs@iitr.ac.in
https://sites.google.com/site/balaiitr/
Five Important Guidelines for finding Time
Complexity in a code
1. Loops
2. Nested Loops
3. Consecutive Statements
4. if –else statements
5. Logarithmic statements

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Asymptotic Notations

• O, , , o, 
• Defined for functions over the natural numbers.
– Ex: f(n) = (n2).
– Describes how f(n) grows in comparison to n2.
• Define a set of functions; in practice used to
compare two function sizes.
• The notations describe different rate-of-growth
relations between the defining function and the
defined set of functions.

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Asymptotic Notation

• Big Oh notation (with a capital letter O, not a zero), also

called Landau's symbol, is a symbolism used in
Computational Complexity Theory, Computer Science, and
Mathematics to describe the asymptotic behavior of
functions. Basically, it tells you how fast a function grows or
declines.

• Landau's symbol comes from the name of the German

number theoretician Edmund Landau who invented the
notation. The letter O is used because the rate of growth of a
function is also called its order.

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Big-Oh Notation (Formal Definition)
• Given functions f(n) and g(n), we say that f(n) is O(g(n)) if
there are positive constants
c and n0 such that
f(n)  cg(n) for n  n0
• Example: 2n  10 is O(n)
2n  10  cn
(c  2) n  10
n  10(c  2)
Pick c 3 and n0 10

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Big-Oh Example

• Example: the function n2 is not O(n)

n2  cn
nc
The above inequality cannot be satisfied since c must be
a constant
n2 is O(n2).

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More Big-Oh Examples

7n-2
7n-2 is O(n)
need c > 0 and n0  1 such that 7n-2  c•n for n  n0
this is true for c = 7 and n0 = 1

 3n3 + 20n2 + 5
3n3 + 20n2 + 5 is O(n3)
need c > 0 and n0  1 such that 3n3 + 20n2 + 5  c•n3 for n  n0
this is true for c = 4 and n0 = 21

 3 log n + 5
3 log n + 5 is O(log n)
need c > 0 and n0  1 such that 3 log n + 5  c•log n for n  n0
this is true for c = 8 and n0 = 2

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Big-Oh and Growth Rate

• The big-Oh notation gives an upper bound on the growth

rate of a function
• The statement “f(n) is O(g(n))” means that the growth rate of
f(n) is no more than the growth rate of g(n)
• Useful to find the worst case of an algorithm

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 2 2
• Prove that f ( n )  5n  2 n  1 is O (n )

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• Write an efficient program to find whether given number is
prime or not.

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AKS algorithm

• Agrawal, Kayal and Saxena from IIT Kanpur come up with

an algorithm for a prime number program
O (log k n)

– PRIMES is in P, Annals of Mathematics, 160(2): 781-793,

2004
• Infosys Mathematics Prize, 2008.
• Fulkerson Prize for the paper “PRIMES is in P”, 2006.
• Gödel Prize for the paper “PRIMES is in P", 2006.
• Several awards and prizes

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 Programming Contest Sites

• https://icpc.baylor.edu/regionals/finder/world-finals-2019 (ACM
ICPC)
– Team “Hold right there Sparky” of IITR is in the World finals 2019
– Team “Triangulation” of IITR was in the World finals 2018
• http://www.codechef.com (Online Contest)
• http://www.topcoder.com
• http://www.spoj.com
• http://www.interviewstreet.com

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Find the output of the following code

int n=32;
steps=0;
for (int i=1; i<=n;i*=2)
steps++;
cout<<steps;

• Example of O(log n) algorithm.

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• A log10 (n) , B  log 2 (n) both are of O(log n),
base doesn’t matter,
• Suppose xm  log m n  f (n) and xk  log k n  g (n)
xm xk
m  n and k n
xm xk
m k
 x m  x k log m k
 f ( n )  g ( n ) log m k  cg ( n )
where c  log m k
 f ( n )  cg ( n )
 f ( n ) and g ( n ) are of O( log n)