Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!dino!atanasoff!hascall
From: hascall@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: a tree question
Message-ID: <1404@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Date: 29 Aug 89 15:04:23 GMT
References: <1074@taurus.BITNET> <77200043@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: hascall@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu.UUCP (John Hascall)
Organization: Iowa State Univ. Computation Center
Lines: 24

In article <77200043@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
 
}Re: Hascall from Cornell criticizes the high overhead in Splay Trees
}    blames problem on theoretical computer scientists.

  Just because we are in the middle of Iowa is no reason to call
  our university "CORNell"!
 
   Anyway, I merely pointed out that asymptotic efficiency (big O)
   does not always equate to real world efficiency.  The converse
   can also be true (i.e., qsort).

   I wasn't blaming anyone, just stating that in theory many practical
   aspects are overlooked/ignored in order to make the theory more
   manageable/tractable/understandable.

   This does not make the theory any less important, rather it merely
   emphasizes that what's important is knowing how to decide which
   theory is applicable to your real world problem (and knowing how
   to apply it).


John Hascall
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY