Random Definition: Amortized Time
To write off an expenditure for (office
equipment, for example) by prorating
A nonspatial continuum in which
events occur in apparently
irreversible succession from the past
through the present to the future.
Running time limit resulting from writing off expensive
runs of an algorithm over multiple cheap runs of the
algorithm, usually resulting in a lower overall running time
than indicated by the worst possible case.
If M operations take total O(M log N) time, amortized time per operation is O(log N)