Thursday, 6 December 2018

probability - Is the growth on an exponential function faster than on a power function? Is this explanation valid?



I'm trying to find simple mathematical proof that lengthy passwords are more secure than complex (with multiple symbols) ones. I don't want to get into the concept of entropy - it is not useful to me atm. I've found this explanation at Security Stack, which it seemed pretty reasonable to me. My question is: is this explanation valid and, if so, is there a limit to it's validity?. My doubt comes from testing it out considering a password with n digits, but restrict to a group of 26 characters (the alphabet) vs a password with fixed 10 digits, with n possible characters:



f(n)=26nvsf(n)=n10.



For these two functions it just doesn't work out as the answer in Security Stack explained. So, how does this work?



I guess the title may be a bit misleading, because this question markes as duplicate does not answer my question! I get that exponential growth is faster than polynomial growth, but why doesn't it apply to these two functions I'm comparing? I mean, what is wrong in my line of thought?



Answer



It's certainly true that ax,a>0 eventually grows faster than xb,b>0. (Perhaps the easiest proof is the fact that 0xecxdx=1c2,c>0 is finite. Thus lim, so x^b can't keep up with e^{bcx}; now take c=b^{-1}\ln a.) So 26^x>x^{10} for all sufficiently large x.


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