
Measures of Complexity: A non-exhaustive list (2001) [pdf] - breck
http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/Complexity.PDF
======
elevates
From the same author this MOOC (Introduction to Information Theory):

[https://www.complexityexplorer.org/tutorials/55-introduction...](https://www.complexityexplorer.org/tutorials/55-introduction-
to-information-theory)

Recommended for (Introduction to Renormalization):

[https://www.complexityexplorer.org/tutorials/67-introduction...](https://www.complexityexplorer.org/tutorials/67-introduction-
to-renormalization)

~~~
stangls
Measuring computational complexity with dollars is a time dependent expression
of complexity, since that value will change in the future due to cheaper and
better hardware.

An expression line number of operations or expression via Landau symbols is
timeless and can be individually mapped to costs.

------
mafribe
That list is pretty ad-hoc, and doesn't seem to be carefully curated. Fair
enough, one has to start somewhere, but ...

There is clearly a great deal of overlap, e.g. Minimum Description Length,
algorithmic complexity and information theoretic entropy.

There are also many well-understood relationships between different forms of
complexity, e.g. between space and time complexity.

Some appear to be less formal than others, e.g. what is "cost" what is
"crypticity"?

Finally, regarding the broad distinctions, in what sense are the "difficulty
of description" and the "degree of organization" even different?

~~~
moxious
I think he just didn't define complexity at all, just gave ways of measuring
whatever he means.

But of course it's a tough topic. If measuring bit length of the explanation
is a valid way of measuring something's complexity, then the measuring method
itself is pretty complex

------
austincheney
I spend nearly all of my effort on "3\. Degree of organization." I figure if I
can get this right in first the most homoiconic way possible, and secondly
with the shortest code possible then I get the first two points mostly for
free.

It is also why I loathe inheritance. When I read unstructured code written for
inheritance I don't see the same path and flow control that the computer sees.
I just see a bunch of global classes and public/private/static declarations
like a million tiny islands or grains of sand. To me this is a mess.

------
wessorh
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacunarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacunarity)

One of my favorite measures

------
noway421
Cyclomatic complexity might be a go to measure for algorithms.

