Re: four approaches to do a simple sum
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg57244] Re: four approaches to do a simple sum
- From: Bill Rowe <readnewsciv at earthlink.net>
- Date: Sat, 21 May 2005 02:41:19 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 5/20/05 at 4:43 AM, fangh73 at xmu.edu.cn (Hui Fang) wrote: >Here I have a long list, length of 1 million, and I used 4 ways to >get the sum of all elements. >In[1] = longlist=Table[Random[], {1000000}]; >Method 1: >In[2] = Timing[sum=0; For[i=1,i<=Length[longlist],sum+=longlist[[i]]]; sum] >Out[2] = {6.219 Second, 500358} >Method 2: >In[3] = Sum[longlist[[i]],{i,1,1000000}] >Out[3] = {1.718 Second, 500358} >Method 3: >In[4] = Timing[Plus@@longlist] >Out[4] = {0.407 Second, 500358} >Method 4: >In[5] = Fold[Plus,0,longlist] >Out[5] = {0.156 Second, 500358} >The computing time gets shorter and shorter from top to bottom. >It's easy to understand why the first two methods are slow because >they involved an extra variable i for loop control and basically >violates the principle for list manipulation "Never take a list >apart". What I don't understand is why method 4 is faster than >method 3. Any explanation?Or do you have an even faster method? Total provides a faster method to sum a list. For example, In[1]:= $Version Out[1]= "5.1 for Mac OS X (January 27, 2005)" In[2]:=longlist = Table[Random[], {1000000}]; In[3]:=Timing[Fold[Plus, 0, longlist]] Out[3]={0.540862*Second, 499577.6754541984} In[4]:=Timing[Total[longlist]] Out[4]={0.022061*Second, 499577.6754541984} -- To reply via email subtract one hundred and four