When to use Compile[]
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg8720] When to use Compile[]
- From: Luci Ellis <elisha at dot.net.au>
- Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 02:48:01 -0400
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Dear MathGroup, My Mathematica skills have progressed to the point that I care about performance tweaking as well as getting the code to work. I would be grateful for any thoughts group members might have about what functions work with Compile[] and when it should be used. I know that it works for basic numerical operations on numbers and lists of numbers, for example, the definition for the Jarque-Bera test statistic for normality (thanks Colin Rose for alerting me to this -- it halved the Timing result). But what about things like Solve and FindMinimum? Or Regress? Are there occasions where Compiled[] matrix operations will be faster than packages like LinearRegression? What about list construction functions like FoldList and NestList? Can you use Compile[]d functions within them? Does anyone have any rules of thumb about when to Compile[] and when not to? The Mathematica Book's coverage of this issue is a bit scanty, other than it being for numerical functions. Thanks in anticipation, Luci Ellis elisha at dot.net.au -------------- Luci Ellis: elisha at dot.net.au http://www.dot.net.au/~elisha