That one's not so obvious. So let's think about this for a second. To sort a list in linear time, would say, I have to look at each element in the list at most a constant number of times.

所以让我们来思考一会,要在线性时间能排序，列表里每个元素最多被使用常数次,不一定是一次，对吧。

麻省理工公开课 - 计算机科学及编程导论课程节选

Typical characterization, not all the time, but typical characterization, is an algorithm that reduces the size of a problem by one, or by some constant amount each time, is typically an example of a linear algorithm.

我们学习过了线性算法，它的典型特征，不是通用的,但是比较典型的特征是，它是逐一减小问题的大小的，或者说是每次减小常数的大小。

麻省理工公开课 - 计算机科学及编程导论课程节选