Note that all big-Oh run time complexities are in numbers of elementary operations.
If you really want to get down to the brass tacks, a computer scientist is going to define "elementary operations" in terms of a Turing machine (or something equivalent). Since a Turing machine has a finite number of states and symbols available, it can only push a finite number of bits around at once. Multiplying two n-bit numbers together is an O(n**2) operation using the algorithm they taught you in grade school. It can be done in O(n*log(n)) with FFT techniques.

In reply to Re: Re: about Coolness, Impatience and Complexity by no_slogan
in thread about Coolness, Impatience and Complexity by Blop

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