Big O Notation — How to Identify Exponential and Factorial Algorithms

Tomasz Dobrowolski
5 min readSep 17, 2022
Big O Notation — Watch with lights in the background
Photo by Saffu on Unsplash

If you were given a factorial Big O Notation Example, would you be able to identify it?

As a software engineer, you must be careful not to have an algorithm with the least efficient notations.

And to avoid writing these algorithms, you need to be able to identify them.

Here’s how to spot a Factorial and Exponential Algorithm with a Big O Notation Example

In previous articles, we have covered all the notations starting from the efficient range of notations: Constants and Linear.

To the less efficient range of notations known as N Log N, Quadratic and Cubic.

If you’re not sure where to start with the topic, check out: what is Big O Notation.

Big O Notation Complexity
Big O Notation Complexity from Big O Notation Cheat Sheet

The graph above is a good way to picture Big O Notation complexity. This graph originates from the Big O Notation Cheat Sheet. Which is a great resource for discovering all the notations and specific algorithms that fall into each notation.

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Tomasz Dobrowolski

I break down Software Engineering and Tech concepts | Backend Engineer 🐘