ericdrowell / BigOCheatSheet

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Revert latest commit #124

Open willmtemple opened 6 years ago

willmtemple commented 6 years ago

@ericdrowell committed https://github.com/ericdrowell/BigOCheatSheet/commit/1193ed24fa564d00b31100cbcd86f36fa362e224 13 months ago.

The changes in that commit are wrong. Theta and Omega do not mean average case and best case time complexity. Theta, Omega, and Big-O are completely orthogonal to the concepts of average-case, best-case, and worst-case. Strictly speaking, most of the time we say an algorithm is O(p) for some polynomial p, we really mean it is Θ(p). In any case, the information on this page is misleading, and my students now come into class believing that theta is equivalent to "average case," when this is plainly false, because they have heard that this page is the premier resource for algorithm time complexity.

Suggest reverting 1193ed24.

augbog commented 6 years ago

I also want to point out there was a mass deletion in that commit so I would second reverting the last commit.

Also I agree with what @willmtemple said -- it can be harmful for students to associate these concepts with the wrong thing.

Sources:

https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/57/how-does-one-know-which-notation-of-time-complexity-analysis-to-use