Understanding Time and Space Complexity in Algorithms

Naga Sai Krishna Mohan Pitchikala

Abstract: The important concept in algorithms is time and space complexities. This is the critical aspect in choosing the one algorithm over the other. Calculating the time and space complexities are important as they are the measures of efficiencies of the algorithms and based on them certain algorithms are chosen over the other. Time complexity refers to the amount of time the program takes to run according to the input size, whereas the space complexity refers to the number of additional resources that are needed to run the program. In this paper we will define each of them theoretically and explain why they are important in data structures and algorithms and how to understand them practically.

Keywords: time complexity, space complexity, algorithm efficiency, data structures, program resources