Average running time of the fast Fourier transform

We compare several algorithms for computing the discrete Fourier transform of n numbers. The number of “operations” of the original Cooley-Tukey algorithm is approximately 2nA(n), where A(n) is the sum of the prime divisors of n. We show that the average number of operations satisfies $\text{1}\text{x}\text{)∑}{}_{\mathrm{n\le x}}\text{2n A(n) ～ (}\text{π}{}^2\text{9}\text{)(}\text{x}{}^2\text{log}\text{x}\text{)}$. The average is not a good indication of the number of operations. For example, it is shown that for about half of the integers n less than x, the number of “operations” is less than n^1.61. A similar analysis is given for Good's algorithm and for two algorithms that compute the discrete Fourier transform in O(n log n) operations: the chirp-z transform and the mixed-radix algorithm that computes the transform of a series of prime length p in O(p log p) operations.