Algorithmic Complexity

Abstract

Complexity is a point that will be mentioned literally on every page of this book; the discussion of any algorithm or data structure can’t avoid this topic. After correctness, it is the second most important quality of every algorithm. Moreover, often correctness alone doesn’t matter if complexity is neglected, while the opposite is possible: to compromise correctness somewhat in order to get significantly better complexity. By and large, algorithm theory differs from other subjects of CS in that it concerns not about presenting a working (correct) way to solve some problem but about finding an efficient way to do it, where efficiency is understood as the minimal (or admissible) number of operations performed and occupied memory space.