An experiment

Hello, I just thought of comparing the speeds of two methods to double a number in python but didn't got a precise result. Can anyone help me improving this testing?

Here's the program:

import time,random
mainscores=[[],[]]
for digits in range(15):
    print('Calculations with %s digit numbers are going on...' %(digits+1))
    scoreplus=0
    scoremultiply=0
    for m in range(100):
        timebyaplusa=0
        timebyatimestwo=0
        while timebyaplusa==timebyatimestwo:
            a=random.randint((10**digits),(10**(digits+1))-1)
            starttime=time.time()
            b1=a+a
            timebyaplusa+=time.time()-starttime
            starttime=time.time()
            b2=a*2
            timebyatimestwo+=time.time()-starttime
            if b1!=b2:
                print('Error')
        if timebyaplusa>timebyatimestwo:
            scoremultiply+=1
        else:
            scoreplus+=1
    mainscores[0].append(scoreplus)
    mainscores[1].append(scoremultiply)

...and here's the output:

Will it even show any difference?

#ComputerScience #Experiment #Pranjal #PlusVSMultiply

Easy Math Editor

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Comments

Don't know anything about Python, but my guess is that only 1 trial per an $n$ digit number won't tell you much, since both methods have comparable times and the random factors obfuscate any differences in the short term.

If you want to see a difference, try more trials (1000?) and average them out instead of just one trial.

Siddhartha Srivastava - 6 years, 1 month ago

Good idea! Let me try that out.

Pranjal Jain - 6 years, 1 month ago

Well, for 10k calculations, for $n$ digit numbers, $n\in \{1,2,3,\cdots,20\}$ , the results were as follows:

while with 1m calculations, the results were:

Seems like '+' wins in case of bigger numbers.

Pranjal Jain - 6 years, 1 month ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$