2.8 How hard can that be?
Once you decide to do something, how long does it take you? How much money or other resources does it involve? How do you compare the worst way of doing it with the best?
When you try to accomplish tasks on a computer, all these questions come to bear. The point about money may not be obvious, but when you are running an application you need to pay for the processing, storage, and memory you use. This is true whether you paid to get a more powerful laptop or have ongoing cloud costs.
To end this chapter we look at classical complexity. To start, we consider sorting and searching and some algorithms for doing them.
Whenever I hear ‘‘sorting and searching’’ I get a musical ear worm for Bobby Lewis’ 1960 classic rock song ‘‘Tossin’ and Turnin’.’’ Let me know if it is contagious.
2.8.1 Sorting
Sorting involves taking multiple items and putting them in some kind...
