Why do programmers write n=O(n^2)?

Posted by Jaakko Seppälä on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Jaakko Seppälä
Published on 2012-11-12T19:06:29Z Indexed on 2012/11/12 23:13 UTC
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notation

I studied algorithms in a book Cormen & al. "Introduction to algorithms". In the fourth printing, on the page 43 defines

O(g(n))={f(n):there exists positive constants c and n_0 s.t. 0<=f(n)<=cg(n) for all n>=n_0}

I reported this as a bug in the book www-site because this leads to notation like n=O(n^2) and suggested alternative given in http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=296&t=31517&start=20 . It looks like my bug report has not been accepted. Why the programmers won't renew the notation?

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