| 释义 |
complexity|kəmˈplɛksɪtɪ|
[f. L. complex-us complex + -ity: cf. mod.F. complexité.]
The quality or condition of being complex.
1. Composite nature or structure.
a1721J. Keill Maupertuis' Diss. (1734) 27 Bulffinger, rejecting this complexity of Motion, starts a third System. 1847Emerson Repr. Men, Goethe Wks. (Bohn) I. 394 The highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity. 1859Darwin in Life & Lett. (1887) II. 210 A tendency to advance in complexity of organisation.
2. Involved nature or structure, intricacy; see complex a. 2.
1790Burke Fr. Rev. 91 The objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity. 1837Thirlwall Greece IV. xxviii. 26 Some transactions..gave a singular complexity to the affairs of the contending parties. 1862Buckle Civiliz. (1873) III. v. 301 Partly from the complexity of the subject, all attempts at a scientific investigation of morals have failed.
b. Gram. see complex a. 2 c.
1872W. Minto Eng. Lit. Introd. 5 ‘Complexity’ in the grammatical sense, must be regarded as an accident of the period and not part of its essence.
3. quasi-concr. An instance of complexity; a complicated condition; a complication.
1794Godwin Cal. Williams 183 Not for one hour could I withdraw myself from this complexity of horrors. 1859Tennyson Merlin & V. 731 The..many-corridor'd complexities Of Arthur's palace. 1869J. Martineau Ess. II. 144 The complexities which were to vanish under their skill.
Add:[2.] c. Math. More fully computational complexity. A measure of the difficulty of solving a class of problem, as measured by the expected number of computational steps required to do so using an algorithm; the branch of computational theory concerned with this property.
1963Israel Jrnl. Math. I. 211 Hartmanis, J. and Stearns, R. E., On the computational complexity of algorithms, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. to appear. 1965Hartmanis & Stearns in Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. CXVII. 285 The computational complexity of a sequence is to be measured by how fast a multitape Turing machine can print out the terms of the sequence. 1967Jrnl. Assoc. Computing Machinery XIV. 322 The complexity theory offered here is machine-independent. 1979Page & Wilson Introd. Computational Combinatorics vi. 155 The problems which have so far attracted most study by theorists working in complexity fall into two classes. 1982J. Campbell Grammatical Man ii. ix. 105 The power of a small number of fixed rules to produce an unpredictable amount of complexity. 1989Encycl. Brit. XVI. 632/2 The prominent research in this field concerns the theory of computational complexity. Ibid. 633/1 The complexity of the best available algorithm for the solution of a problem is compared with the complexity of the problem to decide whether a better algorithm can be devised. |