Measuring Talkativeness With Big O Notation

In addition to its commonly known uses, Big O Notation can also useful for describing a person's talkativeness. Given the number of words you say to a person, their Big O factor tells you how long their response will probably be.

The stereotypical male's Big O factor is O(1). Regardless of what you say to him, you get a constant response (which may or may not be a grunt).

A cooperative conversation would be some where in the neighborhood of O(n) meaning that both parties are contributing equal amounts.

Then we get to the chatterbox who has a Big O factor of O(n^3). I get a little nervous when I encounter a person with this kind of Big O factor. I know that even if I grunt, that will spawn a long and drawn out discussion on some topic.

I used to know a guy who was somewhere around O(n^n!). I really dreaded seeing him.

What gets dangerous is when you have two O(n^n) (or worse) folks talking with each other. Each one's response is amplified by the others until they're both talking over each other and they pass out from buffer overflows.

I've been too general up too this point. I know that based on the topic of conversation, I have different Big O factors. Here is a list of topics and my Big O factor for each topic.

• Sports - O(1) (yes, I will grunt).
• Politics - O(n/2)
• Computers - O(n^2)
• Clothing, Shoes or Purses - O(1)