The Complexity of 2-Fold Branched Coverings of a 3-Sphere

Complexity is a function which maps a set of 3-manifolds to a set of nonnegative integers. This function has some natural properties (finiteness, additivity, etc.) and it shows, in some sense how complex the manifold is. This function seems important for the classification of 3-manifolds. We evaluate of the complexity of 2-fold branched coverings of a 3-sphere. We present a theoretical estimate and compare it with experimental data.