- it will use O(n) space where n is some measure of one of the parameters (instead of n you could have some sort of function of multiple measures of multiple parameters)
- same but time use instead of space use
- same but number of copies
- the size of an output will be the size of an input, or less than it
- the allocated memory after the function runs is less than allocated memory before the function runs
- given the body of a function, and given that all the functions used in the body have well defined complexities, the complexity of the function being defined with them is known or at least has a good upper bound that is provably true