I am trying to wrap my head around big O notation and am quickly stuck just trying to understand the the mathematical jargon that is thrown around. It has been a long time since I touched that type of math and therefore need a refresher course.
Some of the terms that are looking foreign to me (but definitely not all), include: log, function, n!, √, etc.
Which mathematic skills are necessary to understand big-o notation on a basic level? Is that just basic algebra?
In big-O we don't care about multiplicative constants and only care about the term that is the largest as $n$ gets large. Taking $n$ as the variable, $a$ as some fixed number, and $b$ as some fixed number with $a \gt b \gt 1$ you should prove and be very comfortable with $$n^n \gt n! \gt a^n \gt b^n \gt n^a \gt n^b\gt n^{1/b} \gt n^{1/a} \gt (\ln n)^a$$ where the greater than signs mean eventually (as $n$ gets large) so much greater that it overwhelms any multiplicative constant.