Fast vector math in Clojure / Incanter

Question

I\'m currently looking into Clojure and Incanter as an alternative to R. (Not that I dislike R, but it just interesting to try out new languages.) I like Incanter and find the s

Answer 1

Here's a Java arrays implementation that is on my system faster than your R code (YMMV). Note enabling the reflection warnings, which is essential when optimizing for performance, and the repeated type hint on y (the one on the def didn't seem to help for the aset) and casting everything to primitive double values (the dotimes makes sure that i is a primitive int).

(set! *warn-on-reflection* true)
(use 'incanter.stats)
(def ^"[D" x (double-array (sample-normal 1e7)))

(time
 (do
   (def ^"[D" y (double-array (dec (count x))))
   (dotimes [i (dec (count x))]
     (aset ^"[D" y
       i
       (double (- (double (aget x (inc i)))
                  (double (aget x i))))))))