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Big O notation

Big O notation is a way to describe how the time complexity/efficiency of an algorithm scales with the size of the data that it is processing.

Big O notation is a way to describe how the time complexity/efficiency of an algorithm (or function) scales with the size of the data that it is processing.

In this video, you will be introduced to the idea of Big O notation, and you will also follow along with some examples to explain this.

Follow along

The file used in this video is Introducing Time Efficiency and Big O Notation.ipynb. Please download this file from the Downloads section below.
Make sure you are able to access it, in order to follow along with the video.

Join the discussion

At the beginning of this video, the question was: What is Big O notation, and why should we care about it? After watching this video, what are your thoughts on this?
Use the Comments section below and let us know your thoughts. Try to respond to at least one other post and once you are happy with your contribution, click the Mark as complete button to check the step off, then you can move to the next step.

In the next step, we will look at more examples that will illustrate why thinking of time complexity can be so important.

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Intermediate Python

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FutureLearn - Learning For Life

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