Splitting it like this still yields a linear algorithm. If f(n) is the time to add a list of length n, then you have f(n) = 2*f(n/2), so f(n) is linear. David
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:04 AM, Simon King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dear Sage team, > > i made a few timings with the "sum" function: > > sage: L2=range(100) > sage: L3=range(1000) > sage: L4=range(10000) > sage: L5=range(100000) > sage: L6=range(1000000) > sage: timeit('a=sum(L2,0)') > 625 loops, best of 3: 299 µs per loop > sage: timeit('a=sum(L3,0)') > 125 loops, best of 3: 1.35 ms per loop > sage: timeit('a=sum(L4,0)') > 25 loops, best of 3: 13.6 ms per loop > sage: timeit('a=sum(L5,0)') > 5 loops, best of 3: 138 ms per loop > sage: timeit('a=sum(L6,0)') > 5 loops, best of 3: 1.37 s per loop > > So, it seems that the time grows about linearly in the length of the > list. Shouldn't it be possible to have it growing logarithmically? > Namely when sum(L) splits L into two sub-lists L0,L1 of about the same > size and returns sum(L0)+sum(L1)? Or would this introduce a huge > overhead? > > I am not a computer scientist, so perhaps i am mistaken. Where is the > source code of the sum function? > > Yours > Simon > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---