To be able to communicate the ideas contained in this chapter clearly, first I need to provide some simple definitions. When I refer to an algorithm, I mean an abstract specification for a process. When I refer to an implementation, I refer to the way an algorithm is actually programmed. Finally, when I refer to a program or an application, I mean a set of such algorithm implementations working together. Having said that, it's easy to see how an algorithm can be implemented in many different ways (for example, one implementation may be using a list, while another may be using an array). Each of these implementations will have different performances, and they are related, but not equivalent, to an algorithm's time-complexity.

For those unfamiliar with the last term, each algorithm has the following two basic properties

• Time complexity...