I just started working with Mathematica (5.0) for the first time, and while the manual has been helpful, I'm not entirely sure my technique has been correct using (Full)Simplify. I am using the program to check my work on a derived transform to change between reference frames, which consisted of multiplying a trio of relatively large square matrices.
A colleague and I each did the work by hand, separately, to make sure there were no mistakes. We hoped to get a third check from the program, which seemed that it would be simple enough to ask. The hand calculations took some time due to matrix size, but we came to the same conclusions. The fact that we had the same answer made me skeptical when the program produced different results.
I've checked and double checked my inputs.
I am definitely . (dot-multiplying) the matrices for correct multiplication.
FullSimplify made no difference.
Neither have combinations with TrigReduce / expanding algebraically before simplifying.
I've taken indices from the final matrix and tryed to simplify them while isolated, to no avail, so the problem isn't due to the use of matrices.
I've also tried to multiply the first two matrices, simplify, and then multiply that with the third matrix; however, this produced the same results as before.
I thought Simplify automatically crossed into all levels of Heads, so I didn't need to worry about mapping, but even where zeros would be expected as outputs in the matrix, there are terms, and where we would expect terms, there are close answers, plus a host of sin and cosine terms that do not reduce.
Does anyone frequent any type of technique with Simplify to get more preferable results, in contrast to solely using Simplify?
If there are assumptions on parameter ranges you will want to feed them to Simplify. The following simple examples will indicate why this might be useful.
In[218]:= Simplify[a*Sqrt[1 - x^2] - Sqrt[a^2 - a^2*x^2]]
Out[218]= a Sqrt[1 - x^2] - Sqrt[-a^2 (-1 + x^2)]
In[219]:= Simplify[a*Sqrt[1 - x^2] - Sqrt[a^2 - a^2*x^2],
Assumptions -> a > 0]
Out[219]= 0
Assuming this and other responses miss the mark, if you could provide an example that in some way shows the possibly bad behavior, that would be very helpful. Disguise it howsoever necessary in order to hide proprietary features: bleach out watermarks, file down registration numbers, maybe dress it in a moustache.
Daniel Lichtblau
Wolfram Research
As you didn't give much details to chew on I can only give you a few tips:
Mma5 is pretty old. The current version is 8. If you have access to someone with 8 you might ask him to try it to see whether that makes a difference. You could also try WolframAlpha online (http://www.wolframalpha.com/), which also understands some (all?) Mma syntax.
Have you tried comparing your own and Mma's result numerically? Generate a Table of differences for various parameter values or use Plot. If the differences are negligable (use Chop to cut off small residuals) the results are probably equivalent.
Cheers -- Sjoerd
Related
I'm writing a program that's manipulating polynomials. I'm defining polynomials recursively as either a term (base case) or a sum or product of polynomials (recursive cases).
Sums and products are completely identical as far as their contents are concerned. They just contain a sequence of polynomials. But they need to be processed very differently. So to distinguish them I have to somehow tag my sequences of polynomials.
Currently I have two records - Sum and Product - defined. But this is causing my code to be littered with the line (:polynomials sum-or-product) to extract the contents of polynomials. Also printing out even small polynomials in the REPL produces so much boilerplate that I have to run everything through a dedicated prettyprinting routine if I want to make sense of it.
Alternatives I have considered are tagging my sums and products using metadata instead, or putting a + or * symbol at the head of the sequence. But I'm not convinced that either of these approaches are good style and I'm wondering if there's perhaps another option I haven't considered yet.
Putting a + or * symbol at the head of the sequence sounds like it would print out nicely. I would try implementing the processing of these two different "types" via multimethods, which keeps the calling convention neat and extensible. That document starts from object-oriented programmin view, but the "area of a shape" is a very neat example on what this approach can accomplish.
In your case you'd use first of the seq to determine if you are dealing with a sum or a product of polynomials, and the multimethod would automagically use the correct implementation.
I am making some software that need to work with integers.
Also I need to apply some formula to those integers, repeatedly over time (example, do x/=z several times in a row for a indefinite amount).
All tools, algorithms and formulas I could think or find, or don't work with integers at all, or work as approximations at best.
For example the x/=z several times in a row for example, you can theoretically calculate what x will be in the 10th time by doing x = x/(z^10), but that will be wrong if the result is fractional, you can use floor(x/(z^10)), but the result will STILL be wrong.
Plotting software that I found also don't have integers at all, or has "floor()/ceil()" functions support, at best, and still the result would fall in the problem of the previous paragraph.
So how I do it?
Here's something to get you going for the iteration of x/=z:
(that should have ended in "all three terms are 0 with regard to integer division")
Now if x or z are negative, you can try and see whether this still holds; I did not invest the time to make the necessary case distinctions, but they should be fairly analogous.
As Karoly Horvath mentions in a comment, without a clear specification of the kinds of functions for which you would like to find a shortcut to replace iterative evaluation, helping you out won't be possible since there are uncountably many functions over the integers, and the same approach won't work for all of them.
I have implemented a MC-Simulation of the 2D Ising model in C99.
Compiling with gcc 4.8.2 on Scientific Linux 6.5.
When I scale up the grid the simulation time increases, as expected.
The implementation simply uses the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm.
I tried to find out a way to speed up the algorithm, but I haven't any good idea ?
Are there some tricks to do so ?
As jimifiki wrote, try to do a profiling session.
In order to improve on the algorithmic side only, you could try the following:
Lookup Table:
When calculating the energy difference for the Metropolis criteria you need to evaluate the exponential exp[-K / T * dE ] where K is your scaling constant (in units of Boltzmann's constant) and dE the energy-difference between the original state and the one after a spin-flip.
Calculating exponentials is expensive
So you simply build a table beforehand where to look up the possible values for the dE. There will be (four choose one plus four choose two plus four choose three plus four choose four) possible combinations for a nearest-neightbour interaction, exploit the problem's symmetry and you get five values fordE: 8, 4, 0, -4, -8. Instead of using the exp-function, use the precalculated table.
Parallelization:
As mentioned before, it is possible to parallelize the algorithm. To preserve the physical correctness, you have to use a so-called checkerboard concept. Consider the two-dimensional grid as a checkerboard and compute only the white cells parallel at once, then the black ones. That should be clear, considering the nearest-neightbour interaction which introduces dependencies of the values.
Use GPGPU:
You can also implement the simulation on a GPGPU, e.g. using CUDA, if you're already working on C99.
Some tips:
- Don't forget to align C99-structs properly.
- Use linear Arrays, not that nested ones. Aligned memory is normally faster to access, if done properly.
- Try to let the compiler do loop-unrolling, etc. (gcc special options, not default on O2)
Some more information:
If you look for an efficient method to calculate the critical point of the system, the method of choice would be finite-size scaling where you simulate at different system-sizes and different temperature, then calculate a value which is system-size independet at the critical point, therefore an intersection point of the corresponding curves (please see the theory to get a detailed explaination)
I hope I was helpful.
Cheers...
It's normal that your simulation times scale at least with the square of the size. Isn't it?
Here some subjestions:
If you are concerned with thermalization issues, try to use parallel tempering. It can be of help.
The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm can be made parallel. You could try to do it.
Check you are not pessimizing the code.
Are your spin arrays of ints? You could put many spins on the same int. It's a lot of work.
Moreover, remember what Donald taught us:
premature optimisation is the root of all evil
Before optimising you should first understand where your program is slow. This is called profiling.
Recently I realized I have been doing too much branching without caring the negative impact on performance it had, therefore I have made up my mind to attempt to learn all about not branching. And here is a more extreme case, in attempt to make the code to have as little branch as possible.
Hence for the code
if(expression)
A = C; //A and C have to be the same type here obviously
expression can be A == B, or Q<=B, it could be anything that resolve to true or false, or i would like to think of it in term of the result being 1 or 0 here
I have come up with this non branching version
A += (expression)*(C-A); //Edited with thanks
So my question would be, is this a good solution that maximize efficiency?
If yes why and if not why?
Depends on the compiler, instruction set, optimizer, etc. When you use a boolean expression as an int value, e.g., (A == B) * C, the compiler has to do the compare, and the set some register to 0 or 1 based on the result. Some instruction sets might not have any way to do that other than branching. Generally speaking, it's better to write simple, straightforward code and let the optimizer figure it out, or find a different algorithm that branches less.
Jeez, no, don't do that!
Anyone who "penalize[s] [you] a lot for branching" would hopefully send you packing for using something that awful.
How is it awful, let me count the ways:
There's no guarantee you can multiply a quantity (e.g., C) by a boolean value (e.g., (A==B) yields true or false). Some languages will, some won't.
Anyone casually reading it is going observe a calculation, not an assignment statement.
You're replacing a comparison, and a conditional branch with two comparisons, two multiplications, a subtraction, and an addition. Seriously non-optimal.
It only works for integral numeric quantities. Try this with a wide variety of floating point numbers, or with an object, and if you're really lucky it will be rejected by the compiler/interpreter/whatever.
You should only ever consider doing this if you had analyzed the runtime properties of the program and determined that there is a frequent branch misprediction here, and that this is causing an actual performance problem. It makes the code much less clear, and its not obvious that it would be any faster in general (this is something you would also have to measure, under the circumstances you are interested in).
After doing research, I came to the conclusion that when there are bottleneck, it would be good to include timed profiler, as these kind of codes are usually not portable and are mainly used for optimization.
An exact example I had after reading the following question below
Why is it faster to process a sorted array than an unsorted array?
I tested my code on C++ using that, that my implementation was actually slower due to the extra arithmetics.
HOWEVER!
For this case below
if(expression) //branched version
A += C;
//OR
A += (expression)*(C); //non-branching version
The timing was as of such.
Branched Sorted list was approximately 2seconds.
Branched unsorted list was aproximately 10 seconds.
My implementation (whether sorted or unsorted) are both 3seconds.
This goes to show that in an unsorted area of bottleneck, when we have a trivial branching that can be simply replaced by a single multiplication.
It is probably more worthwhile to consider the implementation that I have suggested.
** Once again it is mainly for the areas that is deemed as the bottleneck **
Suppose that I have these Three variables in matlab Variables
I want to extract diverse values in NewGrayLevels and sum rows of OldHistogram that are in the same rows as one diverse value is.
For example you see in NewGrayLevels that the six first rows are equal to zero. It means that 0 in the NewGrayLevels has taken its value from (0 1 2 3 4 5) of OldGrayLevels. So the corresponding rows in OldHistogram should be summed.
So 0+2+12+38+113+163=328 would be the frequency of the gray level 0 in the equalized histogram and so on.
Those who are familiar with image processing know that it's part of the histogram equalization algorithm.
Note that I don't want to use built-in function "histeq" available in image processing toolbox and I want to implement it myself.
I know how to write the algorithm with for loops. I'm seeking if there is a faster way without using for loops.
The code using for loops:
for k=0:255
Condition = NewGrayLevels==k;
ConditionMultiplied = Condition.*OldHistogram;
NewHistogram(k+1,1) = sum(ConditionMultiplied);
end
I'm afraid if this code gets slow for high resolution big images.Because the variables that I have uploaded are for a small image downloaded from the internet but my code may be used for sattellite images.
I know you say you don't want to use histeq, but it might be worth your time to look at the MATLAB source file to see how the developers wrote it and copy the parts of their code that you would like to implement. Just do edit('histeq') or edit('histeq.m'), I forget which.
Usually the MATLAB code is vectorized where possible and runs pretty quick. This could save you from having to reinvent the entire wheel, just the parts you want to change.
I can't think a way to implement this without a for loop somewhere, but one optimisation you could make would be using indexing instead of multiplication:
for k=0:255
Condition = NewGrayLevels==k; % These act as logical indices to OldHistogram
NewHistogram(k+1,1) = sum(OldHistogram(Condition)); % Removes a vector multiplication, some additions, and an index-to-double conversion
end
Edit:
On rereading your initial post, I think that the way to do this without a for loop is to use accumarray (I find this a difficult function to understand, so read the documentation and search online and on here for examples to do so):
NewHistogram = accumarray(1+NewGrayLevels,OldHistogram);
This should work so long as your maximum value in NewGrayLevels (+1 because you are starting at zero) is equal to the length of OldHistogram.
Well I understood that there's no need to write the code that #Hugh Nolan suggested. See the explanation here:
%The green lines are because after writing the code, I understood that
%there's no need to calculate the equalized histogram in
%"HistogramEqualization" function and after gaining the equalized image
%matrix you can pass it to the "ExtractHistogram" function
% (which there's no loops in it) to acquire the
%equalized histogram.
%But I didn't delete those lines of code because I had tried a lot to
%understand the algorithm and write them.
For more information and studying the code, please see my next question.