Simple Explanation of Big O Part II

So if you want to find a name in a phone book of a million names you can actually find any name by doing this at most 20 times. In comparing search algorithms we decide that this comparison is our 'n'. For a phone book of 3 names it takes 2 comparisons (at most).For 7 it takes at most 3.For 15 it takes 4....For 1,000,000 it takes 20. That is staggeringly good isn't it? In Big-O terms this is O(log n) or logarithmic complexity. Now the logarithm in question could be ln (base e), log10, l...

 We Don't Question Human Artifacts

If the finding of Coines, Medals, Urnes, and other Monuments of famous Persons, or Towns, or Utensils, be admitted for unquestionable Proofs, that such Persons or things have, in former Times, had a being, certainly those Petrifactions may be allowed to be of equal Validity and Evidence, that there have been formerly such Vegetables or Animals. These are truly Authentick Antiquity not to be counterfeited, the Stamps, and Impressions, and Characters of Nature that are beyond the Reach and Powe...

 How Ballooning Changed Our Perspective of the Earth

Ballooning produced a new, and wholly unexpected, vision of the earth. It had been imagined that it would reveal the secrets of the heavens above, but in fact it showed the secrets of the world beneath. The early aeronauts suddenly saw the earth as a giant organism, mysteriously patterned and unfolding, like a living creature. For the first time the impact of man on nature was clearly revealed: the ever-expanding relationship of towns to countryside, roads to rivers, cultivated fields to fore...