Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> But if you are unlikely to discover this worst case behaviour by
> experimentation, you are equally unlikely to discover it in day to
> day usage.
Yes, that's the whole point. Since you won't discover it by
experimentation and you won't discover it by
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 14:07:37 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
> The complexity of hashing depends intricately on the the data and if
> the data is carefully constructed by someone with detailed knowledge
> of the hash implementation, it may be as bad as O(n) rather than O(1)
> or O(sqrt(n)) or anything li
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:28:55 +0200, Christian Stapfer wrote:
> Experiments
> (not just in computer science) are quite
> frequently botched. How do you discover
> botched experiments?
Normally by comparing them to the results of other experiments, and being
unable to reconcile the results. You may
Ognen Duzlevski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Optimizations have a tendency to make a complete mess of Big O
> > calculations, usually for the better. How does this support your
> > theory that Big O is a reliable predictor of program speed?
>
> There are many things that you cannot predict, how
Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:16:39 +0200, Christian Stapfer wrote:
> > It turned out that the VAX compiler had been
> > clever enough to hoist his simple-minded test
> > code out of the driving loop.
> Optimizations have a tendency to make a complete me
"Steven D'Aprano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:16:39 +0200, Christian Stapfer wrote:
>
>> Come to think of an experience that I shared
>> with a student who was one of those highly
>> creative experimentalists you seem to have
>> in mind. He
Christian Stapfer wrote:
> It turned out that the VAX compiler had been
> clever enough to hoist his simple-minded test
> code out of the driving loop. In fact, our VAX
> calculated the body of the loop only *once*
> and thus *immediately* announced that it had finished
> the whole test - the
On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:16:39 +0200, Christian Stapfer wrote:
> Come to think of an experience that I shared
> with a student who was one of those highly
> creative experimentalists you seem to have
> in mind. He had just bought a new PC and
> wanted to check how fast its floating point
> unit was
"Ron Adam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Christian Stapfer wrote:
>
>> This discussion begins to sound like the recurring
>> arguments one hears between theoretical and
>> experimental physicists. Experimentalists tend
>> to overrate the importance of experimental d
