What is asymptotic notation and what does it signify?

Asymptotic notation is a way of describing the behavior of an algorithm as the size of the input data grows. It shows how the execution time or memory consumption changes depending on the data volume, ignoring constants and less significant terms.

Main types of asymptotic notation:

• O (Big O) — an upper bound on the time or memory, guarantees that the algorithm will not perform worse than this limit.
• Ω (Big Omega) — a lower bound, shows the minimum execution time.
• Θ (Big Theta) — exact asymptotics, when the upper and lower bounds coincide.

For example, a sorting algorithm with a time complexity of O(n²) means that when the input data doubles, the running time will approximately increase fourfold.