@gnasher729 So linear search would be $O(2^n)$ on the set, right?

Are $p$ and $q$ functions or constants?

Did you try experimenting with some examples for f, g, h?

Are you familiar with time complexity and basic data structures? If not, I recommend you sign up for AP Computer Science. Time complexity isn't really focused on that much, but a good teacher will probably give a formal introduction into it.

You could disregard outliers from influencing other machines on the network, perhaps?

Possible duplicate of What does a polynomial time reduction mean?

Ah, so $n$ has to be the actual size of the input, not the input itself?