Re: Benchmark challenge

From: Mark Nudelman (markn_at_greenwoodsoftware.com)
Date: 01/23/05 

Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 09:52:46 -0800

C. Bond wrote:
> James,
>
> You appear to abhor the notion of backing up your claims
> with solid evidence, much less proof. You'd rather simply
> accuse others of lying about your work.
>
> Here's another, more objective approach to comparing claims
> about factoring. I took a list of numbers which you recently
> posted with your results. Your program failed to factor
> about half of them and there was no elapsed time data
> provided by you.
>
> Below is the list with results from a quick program I threw
> together *with* elapsed times.

... snip ...

> Notice that (1) *all* given numbers were factored in less
> than 100 microseconds and, (2) I have made no claims
> whatsoever about the value, quality or correctness of your
> work. I have simply posted the results of a simple,
> inelegant program with benchmark data against which you can
> compare your own work.
>
> Please post your results with benchmarks so we can compare
> hard facts instead of unsupported blustering.

James is claiming that his current program is just a prototype to test his
algorithm, and (implicitly) that there is therefore room for substantial
performance improvement. This is not an unreasonable argument. What would
be interesting is to see the performance of his (or your) algorithm on a
range of different sized numbers. This would give a rough idea of the
asymptotic behavior of the algorithm, showing whether it's exponential or
polynomial. If, for example, his algorithm factored a 30 digit number in
twice the time it takes to factor a 15 digit number, this would be
significant. Unfortunately, your numbers are all roughly the same size, so
this sample set isn't useful in determining this crucial piece of
information.

--Mark

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