Is there a computer science topic more terrifying than Big O notation? Don’t let the name scare you, Big O notation is not a big deal. It’s very easy to understand and you don’t need to be a math whiz to do so. In this tutorial, you’ll learn the fundamentals of Big O notation log-linear, or quasilinear, time complexity with examples in JavaScript.

This is the fifth in a series on Big O notation. If you want to stay in the loop, sign up for my weekly newsletter, The Solution.

What Problem(s) Does Big O Solve?

• Big O notation helps us answer the question, “Will it scale?”
• Big O notation equips us with a shared language for discussing performance with other developers (and mathematicians!).

Quick Refresher

If you’re just joining us, you will want to start with that article, What is Big O Notation?

What is Big O?

Big O notation is a system for measuring the rate of growth of an algorithm. Big O notation mathematically describes the complexity of an algorithm in terms of time and space. We don’t measure the speed of an algorithm in seconds (or minutes!). Instead, we measure the number of operations it takes to complete.

The O is short for “Order of”. So, if we’re discussing an algorithm with O(n^2), we say its order of, or rate of growth, is n^2, or quadratic complexity.

How Does Big O Work?

Big O notation measures the worst-case scenario.

Why?

Because we don’t know what we don’t know.

We need to know just how poorly our algorithm will perform so we can evaluate other solutions.

The worst-case scenario is also known as the “upper bound”. When we say "upper bound", we mean the maximum number of operations performed by an algorithm.

Remember this table?

It lists common orders by rate of growth, from fastest to slowest.

Before getting into O(n log n), let’s begin with a review of O(n), O(n^2) and O(log n).

O(n)

An example of linear time complexity is a simple search in which every element in an array is checked against the query.

const animals = [“ocelot”, “octopus”, “opossum”, “orangutan”, “orca”, “oriole”, “oryx”, “osprey”];

for (let i = 0; i < animals.length; i++) {
    if (animals[i] === userInput) {
        return `Found ${userInput} at ${i}`;
    };
};

If you want to go deeper, check out Big O Linear Time Complexity.

O(n^2)

A classic example of O(n^2) is Bubble Sort.

const bubbleSort = (arr) => {
    for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
        for (let j = 0; j < arr.length; j++) {
            if (arr[j] > arr[j + 1]) {
                let tmp = arr[j];
                arr[j] = arr[j + 1];
                arr[j + 1] = tmp;
            }
        }
    }
    return arr;
};

Why is the order of bubbleSort() O(n^2)?

🔑 Nested loops iterating the same input.

We could also write this with a while loop:

const bubbleSort = arr => {

  let swapped = true;

  while (swapped) {
    swapped = false;

    for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
      if (arr[i] > arr[i + 1]) {
        let temp = arr[i];
        arr[i] = arr[i + 1];
        arr[i + 1] = temp;
        swapped = true;
      }
    }
  }
  return arr;
}

Either way, it still uses nested iteration, so it's O(n^2).

If you want to go deeper, check out Big O Quadratic Time Complexity.

O(log n)

Binary Search is a classic example of logarithmic time complexity.

const binarySearch = (arr, num) => {

   let startIndex = 0;
   let endIndex = (arr.length)-1;

   while (startIndex <= endIndex){

       let pivot = Math.floor((startIndex + endIndex)/2);

       if (arr[pivot] === num){
            return `Found ${num} at ${pivot}`;
       } else if (arr[pivot] < num){
           startIndex = pivot + 1;
       } else {
           endIndex = pivot - 1;
       }
   }
   return false;
}

🔑 With each iteration, our function is dividing the input, thus performing the inverse operation of exponentiation.

If you want to go deeper, check out Big O Logarithmic Time Complexity.

O(n log n): Log-Linear Time Complexity

So what is O(n log n)?

Well, it's just that. It's n, a linear time complexity, multiplied by log n, a logarithmic time complexity.

☝️

"Hold up there, mister", I hear you say.

"You said we drop the non-dominant terms, so what's with this n * log n business?"

While it is true that we drop the non-dominant terms in Big O, that's generally when we are adding two different complexities, such as n^2 + n. Here, we are using multiplication. We can't simplify n * log n any further, so we keep both terms.

O(n log n) gives us a means of notating the rate of growth of an algorithm that performs better than O(n^2) but not as well as O(n).

Calculating O(n log n): Merge Sort

Let's look at an example. O(n log n) is common (and desirable) in sorting algorithms. As we saw with Bubble Sort above, we can easily brute force a sort using nested iteration, but that approach doesn't scale.

Here's an implementation of Merge Sort.

const nums = [128, 0, 64, 16, 4, 8, 2];

const merge = (left, right) => {

    let result = [];

    while(left.length || right.length) {

        if(left.length && right.length) {
            if(left[0] < right[0]) {
                result.push(left.shift())
            } else {
                result.push(right.shift())
            }
        } else if(left.length) {
            result.push(left.shift())
        } else {
            result.push(right.shift())
        }
    }
    return result;
};

const mergeSort = (arr) =>{
    if(arr.length <= 1) {
        return arr;
    }

    const pivot = arr.length / 2 ;
    const left = arr.slice(0, pivot);
    const right = arr.slice(pivot, arr.length);

  return merge(mergeSort(left), mergeSort(right));
};

Have we seen this problem, or something like it before?

🤔

Our merge() function is following a pattern similar to what we saw in Bubble Sort above. It accepts two arrays, and, through a series of conditional statements, shifts values out of the arrays and pushes them into a new array, result.

How many operations will merge() perform?

n

To sort an array, we need at least one iteration over each element, so we're already at O(n).

What's happening in mergeSort()?

Our mergeSort() function is following a similar pattern to our binarySearch() above. We create a pivot and divide our input into two arrays.

What does this tell us?

O(log n).

If we merge our two functions, the order of mergeSort() is O(n log n).

Big O Log-Linear Time Complexity

In this tutorial, you learned the fundamentals of Big O log-linear time complexity with examples in JavaScript.

Does O(n log n) scale?

Yes.

Can we do better?

Well...

It depends.

Log-linear time complexity is the order of many common sorting algorithms. But not all sorting algorithms are created equal. We'll look into this in a future article. If you want to stay in the loop, sign up for my weekly newsletter, The Solution.