computational complexity  (kŏm'py -tā'shə-nəl) Pronunciation Key
A mathematical characterization of the difficulty of a mathematical problem which describes the resources required by a computing machine to solve the problem. The mathematical study of such characterizations is called computational complexity theory and is important in many branches of theoretical computer science, especially cryptography. |
computational complexity algorithm
The number of steps or arithmetic operations required to solve a computational problem. One of the three kinds of complexity.
(1996-04-24)