Sarah Lim (slim at u.northwestern.edu)
Last updated 24 April 2016
To measure an algorithm's efficiency, one intuitive idea is to consider the amount of time it takes to solve a problem (transform the input into the desired output).
Unfortunately, it's difficult to measure the exact runtime of an algorithm. In practice, runtimes are influenced by a lot of factors unrelated to the algorithm itself. For instance, the same function might run quickly on a state-of-the-art gaming PC, and much more slowly on an ancient Windows 98 machine.