Big-O and little-o

Kent Merryfield

I was implicitly assuming that the functions in question were nonnegative.

We just don't say things like $O(-x^2)$ or $O(\sin x)$ (as $x\to\infty).$ The functions used inside a $O$ or $o$ symbol should be nonnegative and (most likely) monotone.

**Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2009 7:32 am

transseries · Poincare Conjecture Offline Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 170

**Posted:** Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:59 pm

mathlearner2012 · New Member Offline Joined: 02 Oct 2009 Posts: 15

?????? No idea of what the heck your saying.

**Posted:** Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:37 pm

mkn19 · P versus NP Offline Joined: 29 Apr 2009 Posts: 31

Actually the first person who came up with the big-O, little-o notations was Bachmann in a 1894 textbook. Landau used Bachmann's notations, mentioning his name in 1909.

**Posted:** Thu Nov 19, 2009 11:37 pm