[SciPy-dev] genetic algorithm, number theory, filter design,zerofinding

[Chuck Harris]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pearu at scipy.org [mailto:pearu at scipy.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 1:33 PM
> 
> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Chuck Harris wrote:
> 

[snip]

> > Also, is there any way of checking execution time, do we 
> really care?
> 
> See how it is done in linalg/tests/test_basic.py,
> look for bench_* methods and how they use 
> ScipyTestCase.measure method.
> And yes, we do care and it can be very useful.
> 

Curiously, a quick test shows *all* the python routines as faster than fsolve. I found this surprising. Perhaps it would be worth the hassle of putting these in C, then again, function evaluations might be the bottle neck, although I doubt it.
Times are seconds for 10000 iterations, 

f(x) = 1 - x**2 . 
Initial estimate for fsolve: .5 
bracketing interval for others: [.5,2]
xtol: 1e-12

bisect: 5.859
illini: 2.174
ridder: 2.484
brenth: 2.724
brentq: 2.694
fsolve: 6.150

Chuck