Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software Inc - Spotfire Division
wdunlap tibco.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Keller
> Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 2:11 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Recursion is slow
>
> The following recursion is about 120 times faster in C#. I
> know R is not known for its speed with recursions but I'm
> wondering if anyone has a tip about how to speed things up in R.
>
> #"T" is a vector and "m" is a number between 1 and sum(T)
>
> A <- function(T,m) {
> lt <- length(T)
>
> if (lt == 1) {
> if (0 <= m & m <= T[1]) {
> return(1)
> } else {
> return(0)
> }
> }
> R <- 0
> for (u in 0:T[lt]) {
> R <- (R+(A(T[1:(lt-1)],(m-u))))
> }
> return(R)
> }
>
For starters, remove all repeated calculations from
the for loop. Then vectorize the length(T)==2 case
to avoid a lot of calls to the scalar case. Finally,
I noticed that the answer was independent of the
order of T and that putting it in reverse sorted order
was the faster order, so I did that. I use default
values of arguments so you don't have to supply
derived values when you start but the recursions
don't have to recompute some things.
B <- function(T,m,lt=length(T), Tsorted = rev(sort(T))) {
if (lt == 1L) {
R <- as.integer(m <= Tsorted && 0L <= m)
} else if (lt == 2L) {
mu <- m - (0:Tsorted[2L])
R <- sum(mu <= Tsorted[1L] & 0L <= mu)
} else {
R <- 0L
lt1 <- lt-1L
T1 <- Tsorted[1:lt1]
for (mu in m-(0:Tsorted[lt])) {
R <- R + B(unused, mu, lt1, T1)
}
}
R
}
E.g.,
> system.time(A( c(20,40,35,21,31), 100))
user system elapsed
13.23 0.08 12.93
> system.time(B( c(20,40,35,21,31), 100))
user system elapsed
0.35 0.00 0.33
> A( c(20,40,35,21,31), 100)
[1] 193363
> B( c(20,40,35,21,31), 100)
[1] 193363
Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software Inc - Spotfire Division
wdunlap tibco.com
> -------------
> Bryan Keller, Doctoral Student/Project Assistant
> Educational Psychology - Quantitative Methods
> The University of Wisconsin - Madison
>
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