What is in your Mathematica tool bag? [closed]

Answer 1

This is not a complete resource, so I'm throwing it here in the answers section, but I have found it very useful when figuring out speed issues (which, unfortunately, is a large part of what Mathematica programming is about).

timeAvg[func_] := Module[
{x = 0, y = 0, timeLimit = 0.1, p, q, iterTimes = Power[10, Range[0, 10]]},
Catch[
 If[(x = First[Timing[(y++; Do[func, {#}]);]]) > timeLimit,
    Throw[{x, y}]
    ] & /@ iterTimes
 ] /. {p_, q_} :> p/iterTimes[[q]]
];
Attributes[timeAvg] = {HoldAll};

Usage is then simply timeAvg@funcYouWantToTest.

EDIT: Mr. Wizard has provided a simpler version that does away with Throw and Catch and is a bit easier to parse:

SetAttributes[timeAvg, HoldFirst]
timeAvg[func_] := Do[If[# > 0.3, Return[#/5^i]] & @@ 
                     Timing @ Do[func, {5^i}]
                     ,{i, 0, 15}]

EDIT: Here's a version from acl (taken from here):

timeIt::usage = "timeIt[expr] gives the time taken to execute expr, \
  repeating as many times as necessary to achieve a total time of 1s";

SetAttributes[timeIt, HoldAll]
timeIt[expr_] := Module[{t = Timing[expr;][[1]], tries = 1},
  While[t < 1., tries *= 2; t = Timing[Do[expr, {tries}];][[1]];]; 
  t/tries]