Hi PSF,

Upon further review, random.choices() is O(N).  I was looping through the
values in random.choices() to make it O(N**2) in my code.

Next time I will thoroughly check a function on its own before raising any
issue.  Fyi, BIF is built-in function.  Please close this issue.

Best,
Shawn

On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 5:45 PM Steven D'Aprano <report@bugs.python.org>
wrote:

>
> Steven D'Aprano <steve+python@pearwood.info> added the comment:
>
> What's "BIF" mean? You use that term multiple times but I have never heard
> it before.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't understand your code (and don't have time to study it
> in detail to decipher it). It would help if you factored out your new
> implementation of choices() into a separate function.
>
> I see that your timing code it not reliable for timing individual function
> calls. You include your setup code that builds the input to choices() as
> well as the time it takes to print messages, so we can't really draw any
> reliable conclusions about the speed of choices() from your timings.
>
> To give an analogy: you start the stopwatch at home. Climb into the shower
> and wash, get dressed, have breakfast, drive to work, park the car, buy a
> coffee at the shop next door, go to your office, greet your fellow
> co-workers, and finally stop the stopwatch. And then you say that the total
> time measured was the time it took you to drive to work alone.
>
> Finally, I can't actually work out what part of your code is intended as a
> replacement for the choices() function. You should factor it out into a
> separate function, then time the two function calls:
>
>     choices(dataset, weights)
>     shawn_choices(dataset, weights)
>
> alone (without timing the setup of the datasets, or the I/O, or any other
> irrelevant costs). You probably should use the timeit module for the actual
> timing.
>
> As for the versions of Python, 3.6 and older are in "bug fix only" mode,
> so this will not apply to anything older than 3.7.
>
> ----------
> nosy: +steven.daprano
> versions:  -Python 3.4, Python 3.5, Python 3.6
>
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> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <https://bugs.python.org/issue35980>
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