no, the "O" here is "on the order of", not Big O notation.

harperlee 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I believe NoahZuniga is perfectly aware of the intent and denouncing an abuse of (unneeded) notation.

anonymars 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What is "Big O" if not literally "order of"?

	▲	NoahZuniga 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The O stands for "Ordnung", the German word for order. So it does literally mean that, except mathematicians think that the order of f(x)=1 is the same as the order of f(x)=10^6, because "clearly" f(x)=x gets way bigger than any constant function.
	▲	dekhn 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In physics "order of" means "approximately" using something like a taylor series, which typically start with a constant, then move to higher polynomial terms which add smaller and smaller corrections. Similar, but different, I think...