Can statistics provide a realistic measure for an algorithm's complexity?

Abstract

In doing the statistical analysis of a bubble-sort program [1], where all computing operations were of the same type, we observed that the statistical results tallied fairly well with the mathematical claim about the algorithm's computational complexity. In our next algorithm, the computing operations are not of the same type. We test and observe that the statistical measure of the algorithm's complexity, arguably more ‘realistic,’ does not tally with its mathematical counterpart.