I think theoretical calculations could mean a detailed calculation of the number of times a certain function or operation is called. We all know from tech interviews that there are big O time complexity, but this is usually very hand-wavy and not precise enough. You can usually come up with a more precise formula though it can get messy with recurrences if your algorithm involves recursion. You probably need a computer algebra system. Spending an afternoon doing these symbolic calculations might give you better intuition of why the profiling produced such a measurement.