Very easily tricked.
See e.g. this wrong factorial implementation:
int fun(int n){
if (n==1 || n==2){
return 1;
}else{
return fun(1) + fun(n-2);
}
}
"The function recursively calls itself twice, with n-2 and 1 as arguments. This creates a binary tree with a depth of n, and each node has two children. Therefore, the total number of nodes in the tree is 2^n. Since each node represents a function call, the time complexity is O(2^n)."
Yep indeed, it's really only useful for simple questions. The main use case is for the many people on Leetcode / Reddit who ask for help to analyze their code - I have found it is quite good for those types of problems. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/leetcode/comments/12lwkhg/comment/j...
int fun(int n){
if (n==1 || n==2){
}else{ }}
"The function recursively calls itself twice, with n-2 and 1 as arguments. This creates a binary tree with a depth of n, and each node has two children. Therefore, the total number of nodes in the tree is 2^n. Since each node represents a function call, the time complexity is O(2^n)."