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Does somebody know if Mathematica can be used to calculate the growth of functions, that is in Big O, Theta, and Omega and find proper $n_{0}$ and $c_{1}$, $c_{2}$ respectively?

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Hi JanosAudron, and welcome to Mathematica StackExchange! I'm afraid that while quantities such as $n_0$, $c_1$ and $c_2$ typically appear in formal definitions of the big-O (and related) notations, one most often does not calculate them explicitly to prove domination relations between functions… –  F'x Apr 15 '12 at 7:42
One way that often works to get basic info is to take a series expansion at infinity, say, Series[f[x],{x,Infinity,1}] –  Daniel Lichtblau Apr 15 '12 at 14:31

2 Answers 2

up vote 18 down vote accepted

Yes, Mathematica can be used to characterize the asymptotic behaviour of functions, but maybe not in the straightforward way you intended. Let's see a few examples (I'll focus on asymptotic behaviour as $x\rightarrow\infty$, but behaviour around any other point works the same) of what we can do by looking at limits (using the Limit function):

How to check if $f(x) \in o(g(x))$, or $g(x) \in \omega(f(x))$

There, the question we can ask Mathematica is: what is the limit of $f(x)/g(x)$:

  • If the limit is zero, then $f$ is dominated by $g$, as in the example below, where $$f(x)=x^2e^{-\sqrt x}\ \ \text{ and }\ \ g(x)=e^{-x}$$

    In[1]:= Limit[(x^2*Exp[-Sqrt[x]])/Exp[x], x -> ∞]
    Out[1]= 0
  • If the limit exists, but is not zero (it can be a finite number, an infinity, or an Interval): $f$ is not dominated by $g$ (and if the limit is $\infty$, then in fact $g$ is dominated by $f$). Three examples:

    In[2]:= Limit[(3*x^2 + x + 1)/x^2, x -> ∞]
    Out[2]= 3
    In[3]:= Limit[Gamma[x]/Exp[x], x -> ∞]
    Out[3]= ∞
    In[4]:= Limit[x*Sin[x]/Sqrt[x], x -> ∞]
    Out[4]= Interval[{0, ∞}]
  • If the limit is unknown to Mathematica, then you haven't learnt anything.

How to check if $f(x) \in O(g(x))$

$f(x) \in O(g(x))$ means that, for large enough $x$, $\left\vert f(x)/g(x)\right\vert$ is bounded. So, our options are as such:

  • If $\left|f(x)/g(x)\right|$ converges to a finite number (including zero, but not $\infty$), then that's it: $f(x) \in O(g(x))$

    In[5]:= Limit[(3*x^2 + x + 1)/(Erf[x]*x^2), x -> ∞]
    Out[5]= 3
  • If $|f(x)/g(x)|$ converges to an interval which does not include any infinity, the same is true:

    In[6]:= Limit[Abs[Sin[x]/(2 + Cos[x])], x -> ∞]
    Out[6]= Interval[{0, 1}]
  • If $\left|f(x)/g(x)\right|$ converges to $\infty$ or to an interval containing $\infty$, then $f(x) \not\in O(g(x))$.

  • Otherwise, you have learnt nothing.

The fine print: in many examples above, I calculate $f/g$ instead of $|f/g|$ because I know that the functions both have positive values. Also, if $g(x)$ takes zero as a value in more than a finite number of points, you need to be a little bit more careful than just calculating $f/g$.

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Here's a function bigOSimplify that takes an expression and tries to simplify the O(expr) as a function of n:

maxBigO[l_, n_] := Switch[Length@l,
    1, First@l,
    2, If[Limit[Abs[First@l / Last@l], n -> Infinity] === 0, Last@l, First@l],
    _, maxBigO[{maxBigO[Take[l, 2], n], maxBigO[Drop[l, 2], n]}, n]
bigOSimplify[expr_, n_] := 1 /; FreeQ[expr, n];
bigOSimplify[expr_Plus, n_] := bigOSimplify[maxBigO[expr, n], n];
bigOSimplify[expr_Times, n_] := (If[FreeQ[#, n], 1, bigOSimplify[#, n]] &) /@ expr;
bigOSimplify[a_Plus ^ b_, n_] := maxBigO[a, n] ^ b;
bigOSimplify[expr_, n_] := bigOSimplify[FunctionExpand@expr, n] /; expr =!= FunctionExpand@expr;
bigOSimplify[expr_, n_] := expr;


bigOSimplify[2 n^4 + Log[n] + n ^ 2, n] (* => n^4 *)
bigOSimplify[Fibonacci[n], n] (* => (1/2 (1+Sqrt[5]))^n *)

It might give wrong answers for complex expressions, so check the result with F'x's answer.

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