Hi All,

The following function was showing up in my profiles as a large bottle neck:

# Slow version
def RMSBand(self, histogram):
        """Calculates the root-mean-squared value for the given colour stream 
histogram."""
        intermediateResult = map(lambda (i, h): h*(i**2), zip(histogram, 
range(255)))
        totalSum = sum(intermediateResult)
        
        # calculate rms
        return math.sqrt(totalSum / self.Area())

So after a bit of trial and error I came up with the following function which 
is a lot faster:

# Fast version
def RMSBand(self, histogram):
        """Calculates the root-mean-squared value for the given colour stream 
histogram."""
        totalSum = 0
        for i, h in enumerate(histogram):
                totalSum += h*(i**2)
        
        # calculate rms
        return math.sqrt(totalSum / self.Area())

My question is why is the second method so much faster?
Is it the removal of the extra function calls?
Is it skipping the creation of a list?
Do the basic arithmetic operators get pushed up into C code?

Any insights into the whats really happening behind the scenes would be 
appreciated.

Keir
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