Summation based benchmark for calculators

[pier4r]

(12-24-2017 02:32 AM)AlexFekken Wrote:  Simpson's rule is for student's only. ... But perhaps it explains your obsession (in this thread) with summations.
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i.e. the opposite of combining a bunch of ad hoc operations into a single benchmark and then hoping that your benchmark becomes popular.

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But I would certainly *avoid* calling transcendental functions (whose execution time would probably dominate the total execution time) and then suggest that I am testing the performance of a summation loop...

I do perceive the above sentences as confrontational and belittling. If this would be the case, I don't understand why and I think it is not needed. I mean, whatever the topic is, if it bugs you, you can just ignore it.

Said that, some answers.

First, thanks for your input about what you think should be a benchmark. Anyway I disagree with it. Not technically though. Technically you may be also right, but because what you suggest is quite time consuming since a benchmark like the one in this thread is based on voluntary participation. If you design a task that is time consuming, likely no one (I myself!) will participate. With no data, there is no benchmark.
You yourself said "Lots of words, encouraging you to do lots of work, by someone who isn't going to do that work. ". That confirms my point above.

Second. A benchmark is limited in scope. I can benchmark whatever, if someone uses the calculator for a well defined tasks that is not included, even partially, in the benchmark, the benchmark is useless. I think everyone knows this. In this thread I wanted to collect the time needed to repeat some functions from the set of trig , ln/exp, power functions. That's it. And I thank everyone for it!
This also leads to the third point.

Third: my apparent obsession with summation (thanks for jumping to conclusion!). I see the summation as an easy way to have a loop that tests the given instructions. A loop that can be found also in scientific calculators that are not programmable . If you find another way to let non programmable scientific calculators do a loop without summation or integration, I am interested, seriously.
With a summation, a user can quickly press (if the function is available): Sum function, the function as argument of the sum, the variable, extremes. Execute it. Report the time. End of the task.

4th. In connection to the third point. "Simpson's rule is for student's only.". This sounds like "if you are using a decimal approximation of pi with less than 109 digits, your are doing it wrong". If that sounds good to you, good to know.
Aside from that, I used the Simpson's rule because the only loop available in a sharp 506w is the numeric integration, and it uses the Simpson's rule (the image posted previously is taken from the 506w manual). Then I tried to adapt the formula in the numeric integration so to have the closes possible similarity between the summation formula and the numeric integration on the 506w.

I hope my answers helps to clarify why I did this or that.

Going back to the benchmark topic. Is there anyone willing to do the test with a:
- a 41 version
- 41 CL
- dm41 --> covered by grbanks
- hp 42s
- 35s --> covered by grbanks
- 12C (recent)
- 15C (LE got covered by Gilles)
- 71B
- 67
- 34S

Thanks for your help!

The rest got mostly covered (although having confirmations of the timings, by independent tests, is always good). Well aside from 50g hpgcc and nspire lua, but in those cases the benchmark becomes time consuming, since it is not immediate to program with lua/hpgcc in the calculator.

edit: thanks for the additional results Gilles!
edit2: thanks for the additional results, Grsbanks!