# 7.3.3 Worst Case Input

A procedure may have different running times for inputs of the same size.

For example, consider this procedure that takes a List as input and outputs the first positive number in the list:

(define (list-first-pos p)
(if (null? p) (error "No positive element found")
(if (> (car p) 0) (car p) (list-first-pos (cdr p)))))

If the first element in the input list is positive, evaluating the application of list-first-pos requires very little work. It is not necessary to consider any other elements in the list if the first element is positive. On the other hand, if none of the elements are positive, the procedure needs to test each element in the list until it reaches the end of the list (where the base case reports an error).

In our analyses we usually consider the worst case input. For a given size, the worst case input is the input for which evaluating the procedure takes the most work. By focusing on the worst case input, we know the maximum running time for the procedure. Without knowing something about the possible inputs to the procedure, it is safest to be pessimistic about the input and not assume any properties that are not known (such as that the first number in the list is positive for the first-pos example).

In some cases, we also consider the average case input. Since most procedures can take infinitely many inputs, this requires understanding the distribution of possible inputs to determine an "average" input. This is often necessary when we are analyzing the running time of a procedure that uses another helper procedure. If we use the worst-case running time for the helper procedure, we will grossly overestimate the running time of the main procedure. Instead, since we know how the main procedure uses the helper procedure, we can more precisely estimate the actual running time by considering the actual inputs. We see an example of this in the analysis of how the + procedure is used by list-length in Section 7.4.2.