Potential Method - Amortized Analysis of Worst-case Inputs

Amortized Analysis of Worst-case Inputs

Typically, amortized analysis is used in combination with a worst case assumption about the input sequence. With this assumption, if X is a type of operation that may be performed by the data structure, and n is an integer defining the size of the given data structure (for instance, the number of items that it contains), then the amortized time for operations of type X is defined to be the maximum, among all possible sequences of operations on data structures of size n and all operations oi of type X within the sequence, of the amortized time for operation oi.

With this definition, the time to perform a sequence of operations may be estimated by multiplying the amortized time for each type of operation in the sequence by the number of operations of that type.

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