Linear complexity and quadratic complexity

Posted by jasonline on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by jasonline
Published on 2010-05-05T09:15:17Z Indexed on 2010/05/05 10:18 UTC
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I'm just not sure...

If you have a code that can be executed in either of the following complexities:

  1. A sequence of O(n), like for example: two O(n) in sequence
  2. O(n²)

The preferred version would be the one that can be executed in linear time. Would there be a time such that the sequence of O(n) would be too much and that O(n²) would be preferred? In other words, is the statement C x O(n) < O(n²) always true for any constant C?

Why or why not? What are the factors that would affect the condition such that it would be better to choose the O(n²) complexity?

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