Sedgewick & Wayne · §4.1 Performance

Orders of Growth: From Formula to Real Time

Seven curves, one slider, three ways to draw them. The log–log view is the figure on page 504; drag n and each curve's operation count turns into an actual wall-clock time, so "n² vs n log n" stops being abstract.

Problem size n

1,024

Axes

Assumed speed

order of growthoperations at n = 1,024estimated time

Click any row to hide or show its curve. Time estimates assume purely sequential operations at the stated rate — they're for intuition, not a benchmark. "Counting by hand" assumes one operation per second; "Supercomputer" assumes a petaflop (10¹⁵ ops/sec), roughly the scale of a top-500 machine. Linear and semilog views use n = 1…50; the log–log view uses n = 1…2²⁰ in doubling steps, like the book's figure.