Amortized analysis

In computer science, amortized analysis is a method for analyzing a given algorithm's complexity, or how much of a resource, especially time or memory, it takes to execute. The motivation for amortized analysis is that looking at the worst-case run time can be too pessimistic. Instead, amortized analysis averages the running times of operations in a sequence over that sequence. As a conclusion: "Amortized analysis is a useful tool that complements other techniques such as worst-case and average-case analysis." For a given operation of an algorithm, certain situations (e.g., input parametrizations or data structure contents) may imply a significant cost in resources, whereas other situations may not be as costly. The amortized analysis considers both the costly and less costly operations together over the whole sequence of operations. This may include accounting for different types of input, length of the input, and other factors that affect its performance. Amortized analysis initially emerged from a method called aggregate analysis, which is now subsumed by amortized analysis. The technique was first formally introduced by Robert Tarjan in his 1985 paper Amortized Computational Complexity, which addressed the need for a more useful form of analysis than the common probabilistic methods used. Amortization was initially used for very specific types of algorithms, particularly those involving binary trees and union operations. However, it is now ubiquitous and comes into play when analyzing many other algorithms as well. Accounting method (computer science) and Potential method Amortized analysis requires knowledge of which series of operations are possible. This is most commonly the case with data structures, which have state that persists between operations. The basic idea is that a worst-case operation can alter the state in such a way that the worst case cannot occur again for a long time, thus "amortizing" its cost. There are generally three methods for performing amortized analysis: the aggregate method, the accounting method, and the potential method.