Others have answered with many useful bits but I would mention that it would possibly make a significant performance difference if you added this to your code:
(set! *unchecked-math* true) On Wednesday, February 5, 2014 7:17:13 AM UTC-6, Glen Fraser wrote: > > (sorry if you received an earlier mail from me that was half-formed, I hit > send by accident) > > Hi there, I'm quite new to Clojure, and was trying to do some very simple > benchmarking with other languages. I was surprised by the floating-point > results I got, which differed (for the same calculation, using doubles) > compared to the other languages I tried (including C++, SuperCollider, Lua, > Python). > > My benchmark iteratively runs a function 100M times: g(x) <-- sin(2.3x) + > cos(3.7x), starting with x of 0. > > In the other languages, I always got the result *0.0541718*..., but in > Clojure I get *0.24788989*.... I realize this is a contrived case, but > -- doing an identical sequence of 64-bit floating-point operations on the > same machine should give the same answer. Note that if you only run the > function for about ~110 iterations, you get the same answer in Clojure (or > very close), but then it diverges. > > I assume my confusion is due to my ignorance of Clojure and/or Java's math > library. I don't think I'm using 32-bit floats or the "BigDecimal" type (I > even explicitly converted to double, but got the same results, and if I > evaluate the *type* it tells me *java.lang.Double*, which seems right). > Maybe Clojure's answer is "better", but I do find it strange that it's > different. Can someone explain this to me? > > Here are some results: > > *Clojure: ~23 seconds* > (defn g [x] (+ (Math/sin (* 2.3 x)) (Math/cos (* 3.7 x)))) > (loop [i 100000000 x 0] (if (pos? i) (recur (dec i) (g x)) x)) > ;; final x: *0.24788989279493556 (???)* > > *C++ (g++ -O2): ~4 seconds* > double g(double x) { > return std::sin(2.3*x) + std::cos(3.7*x); > } > int main() { > double x = 0; > for (int i = 0; i < 100000000; ++i) { > x = g(x); > } > std::cout << "final x: " << x << std::endl; > return 0; > } > // final x: *0.0541718* > > *Lua: ~39 seconds* > g = function(x) > return math.sin(2.3*x) + math.cos(3.7*x) > end > > x = 0; for i = 1, 100000000 do x = g(x) end > -- Final x: *0.054171801051906* > > *Python: ~72 seconds* > def g(x): > return math.sin(2.3*x) + math.cos(3.7*x) > > x = 0 > for i in xrange(100000000): > x = g(x) > > # Final x: *0.05417180105190572* > > *SClang: ~26 seconds* > g = { |x| sin(2.3*x) + cos(3.7*x) }; > f = { |x| 100000000.do{ x = g.(x) }; x}; > bench{ f.(0).postln }; > // final x: *0.054171801051906* (same as C++, Lua, Python; different from > Clojure) > > Thanks, > Glen. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.