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SICP exercise 1.22
Problem
Most Lisp implementations include a primitive called runtime that returns an integer that specifies the amount of time the system has been running (measured, for example, in microseconds). The following timed-prime-test procedure, when called with an integer n, prints n and checks to see if n is prime. If n is prime, the procedure prints three asterisks followed by the amount of time used in performing the test.
(define (timed-prime-test n) (newline) (display n) (start-prime-test n (runtime))) (define (start-prime-test n start-time) (if (prime? n) (report-prime (- (runtime) start-time)))) (define (report-prime elapsed-time) (display " *** ") (display elapsed-time))
Using this procedure, write a procedure search-for-primes that checks the primality of consecutive odd integers in a specified range. Use your procedure to find the three smallest primes larger than 1000; larger than 10,000; larger than 100,000; larger than 1,000,000. Note the time needed to test each prime. Since the testing algorithm has order of growth of <math> \theta(n)</math>, you should expect that testing for primes around 10,000 should take about <math>\sqrt{10}</math> times as long as testing for primes around 1000. Do your timing data bear this out? How well do the data for 100,000 and 1,000,000 support the <math>\sqrt{n}</math> prediction? Is your result compatible with the notion that programs on your machine run in time proportional to the number of steps required for the computation?
Solution
None of the Scheme implementations I checked have a runtime primitive, but many have similar functionality. Mzscheme and Chicken provide current-milliseconds, which returns the number of milliseconds that have passed since a particular event (e.g., since starting the Scheme process). The code provided here uses current-milliseconds, but if your particular Scheme implementation doesn't provide it, consult your implementation's documentation for similar functionality (cpu-time, time, etc.) and adapt the code accordingly.
There are a few other differences between the code provided and the code in the text. The provided code only displays a number when it is prime, and displays the time required to find the prime (in milliseconds) in parentheses, to the right of the discovered prime. Also, start-prime-test returns #f if its argument is not prime, otherwise it returns #t (via report-prime).
(define runtime current-milliseconds) (define (square x) (* x x)) (define (smallest-divisor n) (find-divisor n 2)) (define (find-divisor n test-divisor) (cond ((> (square test-divisor) n) n) ((divides? test-divisor n) test-divisor) (else (find-divisor n (+ test-divisor 1))))) (define (divides? a b) (= (remainder b a) 0)) (define (prime? n) (= n (smallest-divisor n))) (define (timed-prime-test n) (start-prime-test n (runtime))) (define (start-prime-test n start-time) (if (prime? n) (report-prime n (- (runtime) start-time)) #f)) (define (report-prime n elapsed-time) (display n) (display " (") (display elapsed-time) (display "ms)\n") #t)
The procedure search-for-primes given below is different than the specification in the text. Rather than searching for primes in a given range, it finds the first n primes beginning with a number a, since that's what the exercise ultimately wants us to answer. search-for-primes uses a helper function, search-for-primes-helper, to accomplish its task. search-for-primes-helper returns 0. It assumes that the first argument is odd and checks only odd numbers for primality.
(define (search-for-primes a n) (search-for-primes-helper (next-odd a) 0 n)) (define (search-for-primes-helper a found n) (if (= found n) 0 (search-for-primes-helper (+ a 2) (if (timed-prime-test a) (+ found 1) found) n))) (define (next-odd n) (if (even? n) (+ n 1) n)) (define (even? n) (= 0 (remainder n 2)))
Let's use this procedure to find the 3 smallest primes larger than 1000:
(search-for-primes 1000 3)
On a circa-2008 computer, chances are that the time required to compute each of these primes is smaller than the uncertainty in Scheme's timing routine, so this isn't a very useful test. We should find primes that take at least a few seconds to compute in order to get a reliable result. Start with 1000 and add an order of magnitude to each attempt until you get a satisfactory result, then repeat this process a few more times to verify that the procedure runs in time proportional to the number of steps required for the computation.
On a 2.4GHz Apple MacBook Pro running Chicken Scheme 3.1 on the Mac OS X operating system, I get the following results:
(search-for-primes 100000000000 3)
Output:
100000000003.0 (485ms) 100000000019.0 (486ms) 100000000057.0 (485ms)
(search-for-primes 1000000000000 3)
Output:
1000000000039.0 (1534ms) 1000000000061.0 (1537ms) 1000000000063.0 (1545ms)
(search-for-primes 10000000000000 3)
Output:
10000000000037.0 (4852ms) 10000000000051.0 (4870ms) 10000000000099.0 (4858ms)
Choosing one sample time measurement from each group of 3, the ratios between successive orders of magnitude (i.e., 10x) are approximately:
(/ 1534.0 485.0)
Output:
3.163
(/ 4852.0 1534.0)
Output:
3.163
And this value is approximately equal to the square root of 10:
(sqrt 10)
Output:
3.162
which demonstrates that the procedure does, in fact, demonstrate a performance order of growth of <math>\theta(\sqrt{n})</math>.