title: Big O Notation with Absolute Value?
body: <p>I'm going through some programming interview question books, and I've seen reference to <code>"O(|A|)"</code> time complexity.  I've never seen this notation with the absolute value given.</p>
  
  <p>Some research led me to <a href="http://bigocheatsheet.com/" rel="nofollow" title="a Big O Cheat Sheet">Big O Cheatsheet</a> that references this notation under the graphs section.  The problem I'm researching is about partitioning an array, which isn't really a graph question (though I risk perhaps showing my ignorance with that statement).</p>
  
  <p>Does <code>|A|</code> refer to the magnitude of the array, or otherwise number of elements, i.e. <code>O(N)</code>?</p>