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Create Article: Big-O Notation #1081

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@angregor angregor commented Jun 2, 2016

Part of Issue #1048

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
# Big-O Notation

In mathematics, Big-O notation is a symbolism used to describe and compare the limiting behavior of a function.
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In mathematics, Big-O notation is a symbolism used to describe and compare the limiting behavior of a function.

Great opening, but maybe you would add a line or two explaining what you mean by limiting behavior.

Added some updates as suggested by @alayek specifically explaining limiting behavior, fixing some grammatical errors, and adding a note about how exponents are expressed in this article.
More grammatical errors fixed, specifically capitalization errors on 'big-O notation'
The symbol of a claim like x = O(x^2) for all x > *n* can be substituted with x <= x^2 for all x > *n* where *n* is the minimum number that satisfies the claim, in this case 1.
Effectively, we say that a function f(x) that is O(g(x)) grows slower than g(x) does.

Comparitively, in computer science and software development we can use big-O notation in order to describe the time complexity or efficiency of our algorithm.
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of our algorithm. of algorithms.

@ghost
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ghost commented Jun 2, 2016

LGTM 👍

Fixed another grammatical error
@Rafase282
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LGTM 👍

Hopefully we can expand this later on. I personally would like to learn how to determine performance and all. This is one topic I passed and still learnt nothing in college.

It is very apparent that while for small use cases this time complexity might be alright, at a large scale bubble sort is simply not a good solution for sorting.
This is the power of big-O notation: it allows developers to easily see the potential bottlenecks of their application, and take steps to make these more scalable.

For more information on why big-O notation and algorithm analysis is important visit this [hike](https://www.freecodecamp.com/videos/big-o-notation-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-care)!
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-[hike]
+[video challenge]

@raisedadead
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Everything else LGTM.

changed phrasing as per suggestion
@ghost
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ghost commented Jun 3, 2016

@koustuvsinha, anything you wanna add?

@Rafase282 Rafase282 merged commit c08fdc0 into freeCodeCamp:master Jun 8, 2016
@BerkeleyTrue BerkeleyTrue removed the QA label Jun 8, 2016
@angregor angregor deleted the patch-2 branch June 8, 2016 23:35
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6 participants