Hi All,
I have this little snippet of code:
import timeit
import numpy
class Item(object):
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
self.values = numpy.random.rand(8, 1)
def do_something(self):
sv = self.values.sum(axis=0)
array = numpy.empty((8, ))
f = numpy.dot(0.5*numpy.ones((8, )), self.values)[0]
array.fill(f)
return array
In my real application, the method do_something does a bit more than that,
but I believe the snippet is enough to start playing with it. What I have
is a list of (on average) 500-1,000 classes Item, and I am trying to
retrieve the output of do_something for each of them in a single, big 2D
numpy array.
My current approach is to use list comprehension like this:
output = numpy.asarray([item.do_something() for item in items]).T
(Note: I need the transposed of that 2D array, always).
But then I though: why not preallocating the output array and make a simple
loop:
output = numpy.empty((500, 8))
for i, item in enumerate(items):
output[i, :] = item.do_something()
I was expecting this version to be marginally faster - as the previous one
has to call asarray and then transpose the matrix, but I was in for a
surprise:
if __name__ == '__main__':
repeat = 1000
items = [Item('item_%d'%(i+1)) for i in xrange(500)]
statements = ['''
output = numpy.asarray([item.do_something() for item in
items]).T
''',
'''
output = numpy.empty((500, 8))
for i, item in enumerate(items):
output[i, :] = item.do_something()
''']
methods = ['List Comprehension', 'Empty plus Loop ']
setup = 'from __main__ import numpy, items'
for stmnt, method in zip(statements, methods):
elapsed = timeit.repeat(stmnt, setup=setup, number=1, repeat=repeat)
minv, maxv, meanv = min(elapsed), max(elapsed), numpy.mean(elapsed)
elapsed.sort()
best_of_3 = numpy.mean(elapsed[0:3])
result = numpy.asarray((minv, maxv, meanv, best_of_3))*repeat
print method, ': MIN: %0.2f ms , MAX: %0.2f ms , MEAN: %0.2f ms ,
BEST OF 3: %0.2f ms'%tuple(result.tolist())
I get this:
List Comprehension : MIN: 7.32 ms , MAX: 9.13 ms , MEAN: 7.85 ms , BEST OF
3: 7.33 ms
Empty plus Loop : MIN: 7.99 ms , MAX: 9.57 ms , MEAN: 8.31 ms , BEST OF
3: 8.01 ms
Now, I know that list comprehensions are renowned for being insanely fast,
but I though that doing asarray plus transpose would by far defeat their
advantage, especially since the list comprehension is used to call a
method, not to do some simple arithmetic inside it...
I guess I am missing something obvious here... oh, and if anyone has
suggestions about how to improve my crappy code (performance wise), please
feel free to add your thoughts.
Thank you.
Andrea.
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