Complexity is ...[the abstract notion of complexity has been captured in many different ways. Most, if not all of these, are related to each other and they fall into two classes of definitions]:

  1. ...the (minimal) length of a description of the system.

  2. ...the (minimal) amount of time it takes to create the system.

The length of a description is measured in units of information. The former definition is closely related to Shannon information theory and algorithmic complexity, and the latter is related to computational complexity.

Related concepts: description, information, algorithmic complexity, computational complexity, emergence and complexity, emergence, complexity profile.

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