Re: Reference works are needed, Timing
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg625] Re: Reference works are needed, Timing
- From: fink <fink at acf4.NYU.EDU>
- Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 11:49:28 -0500 (EST)
There exists a reference work, in one sense, the archives of mathgroup. If someone or a group would remove headers, clean it up a bit, index and (press a cd? post to MathSource? searchable URL?) distribute it would benefit everyone who uses Mathematica. Until I had to work on a problem, I didn't pay much attention to the functions of columns discussion, but found DataManipulation in the Statistics package with most of the functionality needed. Timing as a criterion for efficiency can't be matched. When a function I had written didn't work in a reasonable time, examining the timing exposed the flaw. Timing as a criterion for elegance is of less importance to me; readablity, or understand-ability is what I need to apply the techniques discussed to my work. In the five years I've used the program, the speed of the machine I work on has gone from 261 seconds to 10 seconds for the same calculation, with 5 seconds or less for the machine coming this fall. Howard Fink