When looking at algorithms as defined entities, what makes one algorithm better than the other? Is it the number of steps required to finish? The amount of memory that is committed? CPU cycles? How do they compare across machines and operating systems with different memory allocators?
There are a lot of questions here that need answers, since comparing work with others is important in order to find the best approach possible to solve a given problem. In this chapter, you can look forward to learning about the following:
- Evaluating algorithms in practice
- Classifying algorithm and data structure behaviors
- Estimating the plausibility of a better algorithm
