Since you gave kind of a vague question. I'll just go with the basics. Amortized analysis in computer science is basically the study of worst case run times regarding a sequence of operations.
When looking at potential, it is the physicist's method.
phi (initial state) =0 and every state after is larger than 0.
It keeps track of time but relies on states to know where it is.
The equation C +phi (state')-phi(state) is the main equation. C is the time for an operation, "state" is before and "state'" is after.
There are sets of equations that dictate average run time with this.
ex.
phi (H)= 2n-m. n=number of elements, m=size of array.
This equation is used to calculate the time to double the size.
