A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms

Big O Notation ignores constants. This is simply a mathematical way of saying that Big O Notation never includes regular numbers that aren’t an exponent. In our case, what should technically be O( N2 / 2) becomes simply O( N2). Similarly, O( 2N) would become O( N), and O( N / 2) would also become O( N). Even O( 100N), which is 100 times slower than O( N), would also be referred to as O( N).