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Re: Timing in Mathematica

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg74758] Re: Timing in Mathematica
• From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
• Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 04:02:51 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <euqnqt$8br$1@smc.vnet.net>

amitsoni.1984 at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am using Timing[.......] to calculate the time taken by an
> expression in Mathematica. But it is not showing values below 0.01
> seconds. For values below 0.01s it just shows 0. Second
> 
> Is it possible to get the value of time lower than 0.01s by somehow
> lowering the least count. I am using Mathematica 5.2 on Windows. I was
> getting lower values of time on Mathematica(5.2) on a Linux computer.
> 
> Thank you,
> Amit
> 
> 
It never makes sense to time a computer task that takes such a short 
time because there are all sorts of one-off delays - such as paging 
information into memory - that can distort the result. If you want to 
time f[] (say) I would time:

f[];f[];f[];f[];f[];f[];f[];f[];f[];f[]

and maybe place a loop round this as well to ensure you obtain a total 
time of at least 10 seconds, dividing the result by the total number of 
calls to f[].

Bear in mind that the CompoundExpression (;) will take some time, and 
that Mathematica can cache results in some situations.

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk