Re: Is Mathematica v8 slower than v7 ?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg126564] Re: Is Mathematica v8 slower than v7 ?
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 05:45:55 -0400 (EDT)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
On 5/18/12 at 5:22 AM, yudumbo at gmail.com (perplexed) wrote: >On May 16, 10:27 am, David Bailey <d... at removedbailey.co.uk> wrote: >>I don't think there is much point comparing the speed of symbolic >>calculations from version to version, because later versions may >>contain extra rigorous checks - this is certainly the case with >>certain symbolic definite integrals. >On the contrary, I believe there is a very strong point, at least >for me. >Mathematica, of which I'm a great fan, has a lot of functions in >different fields. >Assume that I'm mainly interested in, say, elementary number theory, >while I never use statistics or differential equations (or Wolfram >Alpha...). >Then, if none of the new features of v8 have an impact on what I do, >and on the contrary the functions I use more often are slightly >slower, then I should think twice about upgrading from v7 to v8. That is a very shortsighted view point. It effectively assumes you will never be interested in any of the new features, V8 introduces, none of the bugs in V7 corrected in V8 impact you etc. That is there is much more to consider when deciding to upgrade then just the speed performance of a few functions you might be using now. And as David Bailey notes, the reason there might be some slow down of some symbolic computations is the addition of more checks. Those aren't added to slow things down. Instead they are added to prevent incorrect results. What is the use of having faster computation if the results aren't correct?