system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does a computer take the same amount of time to divide 1024 by 2 as it would to divide 256 by 4?

I am trying to understand how the splitting part of merge sort runs in O(log2(n)) time as it has to go through hundreds of divisions in later lines. Surely 1024/2 will complete a lot faster than 2/2, 512 times would, right? 

Thanks!
gpt
> Surely 1024/2 will complete a lot faster than 2/2, 512 times would, right?

On the machines you're typically using, integer division is a mostly constant-time operation, so any division runs about as fast as any other division.