big_O

big_O is a Python module to estimate the time complexity of Python code from its execution time. It can be used to analyze how functions scale with inputs of increasing size.

big_O executes a Python function for input of increasing size N, and measures its execution time. From the measurements, big_O fits a set of time complexity classes and returns the best fitting class. This is an empirical way to compute the asymptotic class of a function in "Big-O". notation. (Strictly speaking, we're empirically computing the Big Theta class.)

Usage

For concreteness, let's say we would like to compute the asymptotic behavior of a simple function that finds the maximum element in a list of positive integers:

>>> def find_max(x):
...     """Find the maximum element in a list of positive integers."""
...     max_ = 0
...     for el in x:
...         if el > max_:
...             max_ = el
...     return max_
...

To do this, we call big_o.big_o passing as argument the function and a data generator that provides lists of random integers of length N:

>>> import big_o
>>> positive_int_generator = lambda n: big_o.datagen.integers(n, 0, 10000)
>>> best, others = big_o.big_o(find_max, positive_int_generator, n_repeats=100)
>>> print(best)
Linear: time = -0.0021 + 4E-06*n

big_o inferred that the asymptotic behavior of the find_max fuction is linear, and returns an object containing the fitted coefficients for the complexity class. The second return argument, others, contains a dictionary of all fitted classes with the residuals from the fit as keys:

>>> for class_, residuals in others.items():
...     print('{:<60s}    (res: {:.2G})'.format(class_, residuals))
...
Logarithmic: time = -0.3 + 0.05*log(n)                      (res: 0.072)
Cubic: time = 0.1 + 3.6E-16*n^3                             (res: 0.028)
Quadratic: time = 0.068 + 3.8E-11*n^2                       (res: 0.011)
Constant: time = 0.2                                        (res: 0.17)
Exponential: time = -4.2 * 4.1E-05^n                        (res: 9.6)
Linearithmic: time = 0.0077 + 3.5E-07*n*log(n)              (res: 0.00055)
Polynomial: time = -11 * x^0.84                             (res: 0.12)
Linear: time = -0.0021 + 4E-06*n                            (res: 0.00054)

Submodules

• big_o.datagen: this sub-module contains common data generators, including an identity generator that simply returns N (datagen.n_), and a data generator that returns a list of random integers of length N (datagen.integers).
• big_o.complexities: this sub-module defines the complexity classes to be fit to the execution times. Unless you want to define new classes, you don't need to worry about it.

Standard library examples

Sorting a list in Python is O(n*log(n)) (a.k.a. 'linearithmic'):

>>> big_o.big_o(sorted, lambda n: big_o.datagen.integers(n, -100, 100))
(<big_o.complexities.Linearithmic object at 0x031DA9D0>, ...)

Inserting elements at the beginning of a list is O(n):

>>> def insert_0(lst):
...     lst.insert(0, 0)
...
>>> print big_o.big_o(insert_0, big_o.datagen.range_n, n_repeats=100)[0]
Linear: time = 0.00035 + 7.5E-08*n

Inserting elements at the beginning of a queue is O(1):

>>> from collections import deque
>>> def insert_0_queue(queue):
...     lst.insert(0, 0)
...
>>> def queue_generator(n):
...      return deque(xrange(n))
...
>>> print big_o.big_o(insert_0_queue, queue_generator, n_repeats=100)[0]
Constant: time = 0.00012

numpy examples

Creating an array:

• numpy.zeros is O(n), since it needs to initialize every element to 0:

  >>> import numpy as np
  >>> big_o.big_o(np.zeros, big_o.datagen.n_, max_n=100000, n_repeats=100)
  (<class 'big_o.big_o.Linear'>, ...)

• numpy.empty instead just allocates the memory, and is thus O(1):

  >>> big_o.big_o(np.empty, big_o.datagen.n_, max_n=100000, n_repeats=100)
  (<class 'big_o.big_o.Constant'> ...)

License

big_O is released under the GPL v3. See LICENSE.txt .

Copyright (c) 2011, Pietro Berkes. All rights reserved.