Multiple Variables
Big O (and little o, and Ω...) can also be used with multiple variables. To define Big O formally for multiple variables, suppose and are two functions defined on some subset of . We say
if and only if
For example, the statement
asserts that there exist constants C and M such that
where g(n,m) is defined by
Note that this definition allows all of the coordinates of to increase to infinity. In particular, the statement
(i.e., ) is quite different from
(i.e., ).
Read more about this topic: Big O Notation
Famous quotes containing the words multiple and/or variables:
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)
“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)