Specify a starting index for continuation of calculating Pi - c#
This C# code will calculate Pi to whatever length I specify. I want to be able to start at a given index without recalculating to that point. Precision is not a great concern as this is a puzzle project but I do need this code to reproduce the same results over and over. It works fine as is but I haven't been able to figure out how to modify for a starting point.
//Looking to pass BigInteger to specify a starting index for continuation of calculating Pi
public static BigInteger GetPi(int digits, int iterations)
{
return 16 * ArcTan1OverX(5, digits).ElementAt(iterations)
- 4 * ArcTan1OverX(239, digits).ElementAt(iterations);
}
public static IEnumerable<BigInteger> ArcTan1OverX(int x, int digits)
{
var mag = BigInteger.Pow(10, digits);
var sum = BigInteger.Zero;
bool sign = true;
for (int i = 1; true; i += 2)
{
var cur = mag / (BigInteger.Pow(x, i) * i);
if (sign)
{
sum += cur;
}
else
{
sum -= cur;
}
yield return sum;
sign = !sign;
}
}
You are using the Machin formula with the Taylor serie expansion for Arctan. It should give you about 1.4 digits of precision for each "cycle" (see here). You can't "shortcut" the calculation of the Taylor serie. You can speed-up a little the program removing the IEnumerable<BigInteger> part and simply returning the nth iteration (the yield instruction has a cost) and by changing the BigInteger.Pow with a fixed multiplication. But the calculation will still be made iteratively. There is no known way for calculating PI with a precision of n digits in O(1) time.
Note that there are algorithms (see the wiki) that converge in a smaller number of cycles, but I'm not sure if they converge in a smaller number of operations (their cycles are much more complex).
An optimized version of the code:
public static BigInteger GetPi2(int digits, int iterations)
{
return 16 * ArcTan1OverX2(5, digits, iterations)
- 4 * ArcTan1OverX2(239, digits, iterations);
}
public static BigInteger ArcTan1OverX2(int x, int digits, int iterations)
{
var mag = BigInteger.Pow(10, digits);
var sum = BigInteger.Zero;
bool sign = true;
int imax = 1 + (2 * iterations);
int xsquared = x * x;
BigInteger pow = x;
for (int i = 1; i <= imax; i += 2)
{
if (i != 1)
{
pow *= xsquared;
}
var cur = mag / (pow * i);
if (sign)
{
sum += cur;
}
else
{
sum -= cur;
}
sign = !sign;
}
return sum;
}
Related
How to divide a decimal number into rounded parts that add up to the original number?
All Decimal numbers are rounded to 2 digits when saved into application. I'm given a number totalAmount and asked to divide it into n equal parts(or close to equal). Example : Given : totalAmount = 421.9720; count = 2 (totalAmount saved into application is 421.97) Expected : 210.99, 210.98 => sum = 421.97 Actual(with plain divide) : 210.9860 (210.99), 210.9860 (210.99) => sum = 412.98 My approach : var totalAmount = 421.972m; var count = 2; var individualCharge = Math.Floor(totalAmount / count); var leftOverAmount = totalAmount - (individualCharge * count); for(var i = 0;i < count; i++) { Console.WriteLine(individualCharge + leftOverAmount); leftOverAmount = 0; } This gives (-211.97, -210)
public IEnumerable<decimal> GetDividedAmounts(decimal amount, int count) { var pennies = (int)(amount * 100) % count; var baseAmount = Math.Floor((amount / count) * 100) / 100; foreach (var _ in Enumerable.Range(1, count)) { var offset = pennies-- > 0 ? 0.01m : 0m; yield return baseAmount + offset; } } Feel free to alter this if you want to get an array or an IEnumerable which is not deferred. I updated it to get the baseAmount to be the floor value so it isn't recalculated within the loop. Basically you need to find the base amount and a total of all the leftover pennies. Then, simply add the pennies back one by one until you run out. Because the pennies are based on the modulus operator, they'll always be in the range of [0, count - 1], so you'll never have a final leftover penny.
You're introducing a few rounding errors here, then compounding them. This is a common problem with financial data, especially when you have to constrain your algorithm to only produce outputs with 2 decimal places. It's worse when dealing with actual money in countries where 1 cent/penny/whatever coins are no longer legal tender. At least when working with electronic money the rounding isn't as big an issue. The naive approach of dividing the total by the count and rounding the results is, as you've already discovered, not going to work. What you need is some way to spread out the errors while varying the output amounts by no more than $0.01. No output value can be more than $0.01 from any other output value, and the total must be the truncated total value. What you need is a way to distribute the error across the output values, with the smallest possible variation between the values in the result. The trick is to track your error and adjust the output down once the error is high enough. (This is basically how the Bresenham line-drawing algorithm figures out when to increase the y value, if that helps.) Here's the generalized form, which is pretty quick: public IEnumerable<decimal> RoundedDivide(decimal amount, int count) { int totalCents = (int)Math.Floor(100 * amount); // work out the true division, integer portion and error values float div = totalCents / (float)count; int portion = (int)Math.Floor(div); float stepError = div - portion; float error = 0; for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) { int value = portion; // add in the step error and see if we need to add 1 to the output error += stepError; if (error > 0.5) { value++; error -= 1; } // convert back to dollars and cents for outputput yield return value / 100M; } } I've tested it with count values from 1 through 100, all outputs sum to match the (floored) input value exactly.
Try to break it down to steps: int decimals = 2; int factor = (int)Math.Pow(10, decimals); int count = 2; decimal totalAmount = 421.97232m; totalAmount = Math.Floor(totalAmount * factor) / factor; // 421.97, you may want round here, depends on your requirement. int baseAmount = (int)(totalAmount * factor / count); // 42197 / 2 = 21098 int left = (int)(totalAmount * factor) % count; // 1 // Adding back the left for Mod operation for (int i = 0; i < left; i++) { Console.WriteLine((decimal)(baseAmount + 1) / factor); // 21098 + 1 / 100 = 210.99 } // The reset that does not needs adjust for (int i = 0; i < count - left; i++) { Console.WriteLine((decimal)baseAmount / factor); // 21098 / 100 = 210.98 }
Riemann Midpoint Sum getting crazy numbers
I'm working on a Midpoint Riemann Sum program, and it finds the integral of a randomly generated function called f. Here's what wrote: public static double FindIntegral (double start, double end, function f) { double sum = 0; double stepsize = 1E-2; int numSteps = (int)((end - start) / stepsize); for (int i = 0; i < numSteps; i++) { sum += f(start + (stepsize * (i + 0.5))); } return sum * stepsize; } The function returns numbers that are too low (I have a reliable checking mechanism). I put in x^3 for f, and I got the right answer. I tried a couple of more integrable functions and got a good answer. But somehow once I put in f it doesn't work.
I got the math formula for "Riemann Midpoint Sum" from here. My implementation below seems to get the right answer (using the example function on the page). I used a class because 1) I could make the algorithm work specifying either the step size or the number of rectangles (I preferred the latter) and 2) I didn't see any reason to hard-code either into the algorithm. As it turns out your code seemed to work just fine (see below); Make sure the code you have here in your question is what you're executing and make sure your expected result is accurate and that you're supplying good inputs (i.e. you don't have start and end backwards or the wrong function f or something). In other words what you provided in your question looks fine. Note double is approximate in C# (floating point arithmetic, in general) so to compare equality you can't use == unless you want exact if you're using unit tests or something. public class Program { public static void Main() { function f = x => 50 / (10 + x * x); // 9.41404285216233 Console.Out.WriteLine(new RiemannMidpointSum(6).FindIntegral(1, 4, f)); // 9.41654853716462 Console.Out.WriteLine(new RiemannMidpointSum(1E-2).FindIntegral(1, 4, f)); // 9.41654853716462 Console.Out.WriteLine(Program.FindIntegral(1, 4, f)); } // This is your function. public static double FindIntegral (double start, double end, function f) { double sum = 0; double stepsize = 1E-2; int numSteps = (int)((end - start) / stepsize); for (int i = 0; i < numSteps; i++) { sum += f(start + (stepsize * (i + 0.5))); } return sum * stepsize; } } public delegate double function(double d); public class RiemannMidpointSum { private int? _numberOfRectangles; private double? _widthPerRectangle; public RiemannMidpointSum(int numberOfRectangles) { // TODO: Handle non-positive input. this._numberOfRectangles = numberOfRectangles; } public RiemannMidpointSum(double widthPerRectangle) { // TODO: Handle non-positive input. this._widthPerRectangle = widthPerRectangle; } public double FindIntegral(double a, double b, function f) { var totalWidth = b - a; var widthPerRectangle = this._widthPerRectangle ?? (totalWidth / this._numberOfRectangles.Value); var numberOfRectangles = this._numberOfRectangles ?? ((int)Math.Round(totalWidth / this._widthPerRectangle.Value, 0)); double sum = 0; foreach (var i in Enumerable.Range(0, numberOfRectangles)) { var rectangleMidpointX = a + widthPerRectangle * i + widthPerRectangle / 2; var rectangleHeightY = f(rectangleMidpointX); var rectangleArea = widthPerRectangle * rectangleHeightY; sum += rectangleArea; } return sum; } }
Summing infinite series 1/n
I just started taking my first steps in learning coding and general (starting with c#)and I'm learning from a book currently. The book leaves questions at the end of every chapter. I'm currently unsure on how to proceed with this specific question. The question is as follows: Question: Write a program that calculates the sum (with precision of 0.001) of the following sequence: 1 + 1/2 - 1/3 + 1/4 - 1/5 + … 1/n The book has given the following guidelines for this problem: Guide Lines: Accumulate the sum of the sequence in a variable inside a while-loop (see the chapter "Loops"). At each step compare the old sum with the new sum. If the difference between the two sums Math.Abs(current_sum – old_sum) is less than the required precision (0.001), the calculation should finish because the difference is constantly decreasing and the precision is constantly increasing at each step of the loop. The expected result is 1.307 I have an idea on how to implement this but I do not know how or where to initiate and break the loop when the sum has reached the required precision. I currently use user input to enter n. I would like to know how to automate this process. Here is my code so far. I know its a cop out to use the format {N:2} but i am not sure how to proceed. Would very much appreciate the help! Thanks! using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Threading.Tasks; namespace Demo { class Program { static void Main() { Console.Write("Please enter n: "); double counter = double.Parse(Console.ReadLine()); double sum = 1 + AddSum(counter); // calculate infinite sum Console.WriteLine("Sum = {0:N3}", sum); } static double AddSum(double n) { double a = 0; for (double i = 1; i < n; i++) { if(i % 2 == 0) { a -= 1 / (i +1); // calculates negative fractions } else { a += 1 / (i +1); // calculates positive fractions } } return a; } }
Here's an example that doesn't suffer from subtractive cancellation: static double AddSum() { double pos = 1.0; double neg = 0.0; double delta = 0.001; double current = pos + neg; double previous = pos + 2.0 * delta; int i = 2; while (Math.Abs(current - previous) >= delta) { if (i % 2 == 0) { pos += 1.0 / i; } else { neg -= 1.0 / i; } previous = current; current = pos + neg; i++; } return current; }
You may want to follow the given guideline: don't enter n as the program shall finish automatically. Where is the suggested while loop? You'll figure the answer out quickly yourself then :-) Maybe start with this: static void Main() { decimal result = 1; int n = 1; do { // remember the current result result += 1 / (++n * DetermineMultiplier(n)); } while ( /* precision calculation here */ ); // print result and n } private int DetermineMultiplier(int n) { // return -1 if n is odd, 1 if it is even }
As you not want to specify n and the only exit condition is a precision check, you could do this. static double AddSum() { double a = 0; double oldvalue; int i = 1; do { oldvalue = a; a += (i % 2 == 0) ? (double)-1 / (i + 1) : (double)1 / (i + 1); i++; }while (!(i != 1 && Math.Abs(a - oldvalue) < 0.0001)); // we can remove i!=1 if we know and hard code first default value return a; } Working Example
Find the number
This is a problem statement. Consider a number 2345. If you multiply its digits then you get the number 120. Now if you again multiply digits of 120 then you will get number 0 which is a one digit number. If I add digits of 2345 then I will get 14. If I add digits of 14 then I will get 5 which is a one digit number. Thus any number can be converted into two one digit numbers in some number of steps. You can see 2345 is converted to 0 by using multiplication of digits in 2 steps and it is converted to 5 by using addition of digits in 2 steps. Now consider any number N. Let us say that it can be converted by multiplying digits to a one digit number d1 in n1 steps and by adding digits to one digit number d2 in n2 steps. Your task is to find smallest number greater than N and less than 1000000000 which can be converted by multiplying its digits to d1 in less than or equal to n1 steps and by adding its digits to d2 in less than or equal to n2 steps. How to solve it in C#...
I think you're simply approaching / interpreting the problem incorrectly; here's a stab in the dark: using System; using System.Diagnostics; static class Program { static void Main() { // check our math first! // You can see 2345 is converted to 0 by using multiplication of digits in 2 steps int value, steps; value = MultiplyToOneDigit(2345, out steps); Debug.Assert(value == 0); Debug.Assert(steps == 2); // and it is converted to 5 by using addition of digits in 2 steps value = SumToOneDigit(2345, out steps); Debug.Assert(value == 5); Debug.Assert(steps == 2); // this bit is any random number var rand = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { int N = rand.Next(0, MAX); int result = Execute(N); Console.WriteLine("For N={0}, our answer is {1}", N, result); } } const int MAX = 1000000000; //Now consider any number N. static int Execute(int N) { // Let us say that it can be converted by multiplying digits to a one digit number d1 in n1 // steps and by adding digits to one digit number d2 in n2 steps. int n1, n2; int d1 = MultiplyToOneDigit(N, out n1), d2 = SumToOneDigit(N, out n2); // Your task is to find smallest number greater than N and less than 1000000000 for (int i = N + 1; i < MAX; i++) { int value, steps; // which can be converted by multiplying its digits to d1 in less than or equal to n1 steps value = MultiplyToOneDigit(i, out steps); if (value != d1 || steps > n1) continue; // no good // and by adding its digits to d2 in less than or equal to n2 steps. value = SumToOneDigit(i, out steps); if(value != d2 || steps > n2) continue; // no good return i; } return -1; // no answer } static int MultiplyToOneDigit(int value, out int steps) { steps = 0; while (value > 10) { value = MultiplyDigits(value); steps++; } return value; } static int SumToOneDigit(int value, out int steps) { steps = 0; while (value > 10) { value = SumDigits(value); steps++; } return value; } static int MultiplyDigits(int value) { int acc = 1; while (value > 0) { acc *= value % 10; value /= 10; } return acc; } static int SumDigits(int value) { int total = 0; while (value > 0) { total += value % 10; value /= 10; } return total; } }
There are two memory problems I can see; the first is the generation of lots of strings - you might want to approach that something like: static int SumDigits(int value) { int total = 0; while (value > 0) { total += value % 10; value /= 10; } return total; } (which is completely untested) The second problem is the huge list; you don't need to store (in lstString) every value just to find a minimum. Just keep track of the best you've done so far. Or if you need the data for every value, then: don't store them as a string. Indeed, the i can be implied anyway (from the position in the list/array), so all you would really need would be an int[] of the cnt values for every value. And int[1000000000] is 4GB just by itself, so would require the large-array support in recent .NET versions (<gcAllowVeryLargeObjects>). But much better would be: just don't store it.
But it's throwing System.OutOfMemoryException . That simply mean you're running out of memory. Your limit is 1,000,000,000 or roughly 1G. Times 4 bytes for a string reference that's already too large for a 32 bit system. Even without the actual strings. You can store your answers more compactly in an int[] array but that would still show the same problem. So, lower your limit or compile and run on a 64 bit PC.
A for effort :) Now doing together. You can of course do refactoring. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; namespace _17082903_smallest_greatest_number { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { int N = 2344; int n1 = 0; int n2 = 0; int d1 = SumDigits(N, ref n1); int d2 = ProductDigits(N, ref n2); bool sumFound = false, productFound = false; for (int i = N + 1; i < 1000000000; i++) { if (!sumFound) { int stepsForSum = 0; var res = SumDigits(i, ref stepsForSum); if (res == d1 && stepsForSum <= n1) { Console.WriteLine("the smallest number for sum is: " + i); Console.WriteLine(string.Format("sum result is {0} in {1} steps only", res, stepsForSum)); sumFound = true; } stepsForSum = 0; } if (!productFound) { int stepsForProduct = 0; var res2 = ProductDigits(i, ref stepsForProduct); if (res2 == d2 && stepsForProduct <= n2) { Console.WriteLine("the smallest number for product is: " + i); Console.WriteLine(string.Format("product result is {0} in {1} steps only", res2, stepsForProduct)); productFound = true; } stepsForProduct = 0; } if (productFound && sumFound) { break; } } } static int SumDigits(int value, ref int numOfSteps) { int total = 0; while (value > 0) { total += value % 10; value /= 10; } numOfSteps++; if (total < 10) { return total; } else { return SumDigits(total, ref numOfSteps); } } static int ProductDigits(int value, ref int numOfSteps) { int total = 1; while (value > 0) { total *= value % 10; value /= 10; } numOfSteps++; if (total < 10) { return total; } else { return ProductDigits(total, ref numOfSteps); } } } }
How can I improve this square root method?
I know this sounds like a homework assignment, but it isn't. Lately I've been interested in algorithms used to perform certain mathematical operations, such as sine, square root, etc. At the moment, I'm trying to write the Babylonian method of computing square roots in C#. So far, I have this: public static double SquareRoot(double x) { if (x == 0) return 0; double r = x / 2; // this is inefficient, but I can't find a better way // to get a close estimate for the starting value of r double last = 0; int maxIters = 100; for (int i = 0; i < maxIters; i++) { r = (r + x / r) / 2; if (r == last) break; last = r; } return r; } It works just fine and produces the exact same answer as the .NET Framework's Math.Sqrt() method every time. As you can probably guess, though, it's slower than the native method (by around 800 ticks). I know this particular method will never be faster than the native method, but I'm just wondering if there are any optimizations I can make. The only optimization I saw immediately was the fact that the calculation would run 100 times, even after the answer had already been determined (at which point, r would always be the same value). So, I added a quick check to see if the newly calculated value is the same as the previously calculated value and break out of the loop. Unfortunately, it didn't make much of a difference in speed, but just seemed like the right thing to do. And before you say "Why not just use Math.Sqrt() instead?"... I'm doing this as a learning exercise and do not intend to actually use this method in any production code.
First, instead of checking for equality (r == last), you should be checking for convergence, wherein r is close to last, where close is defined by an arbitrary epsilon: eps = 1e-10 // pick any small number if (Math.Abs(r-last) < eps) break; As the wikipedia article you linked to mentions - you don't efficiently calculate square roots with Newton's method - instead, you use logarithms.
float InvSqrt (float x){ float xhalf = 0.5f*x; int i = *(int*)&x; i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1); x = *(float*)&i; x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x); return x;} This is my favorite fast square root. Actually it's the inverse of the square root, but you can invert it after if you want....I can't say if it's faster if you want the square root and not the inverse square root, but it's freaken cool just the same. http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/
What you are doing here is you execute Newton's method of finding a root. So you could just use some more efficient root-finding algorithm. You can start searching for it here.
Replacing the division by 2 with a bit shift is unlikely to make that big a difference; given that the division is by a constant I'd hope the compiler is smart enough to do that for you, but you may as well try it to see. You're much more likely to get an improvement by exiting from the loop early, so either store new r in a variable and compare with old r, or store x/r in a variable and compare that against r before doing the addition and division.
Instead of breaking the loop and then returning r, you could just return r. May not provide any noticable increase in performance.
With your method, each iteration doubles the number of correct bits. Using a table to obtain the initial 4 bits (for example), you will have 8 bits after the 1st iteration, then 16 bits after the second, and all the bits you need after the fourth iteration (since a double stores 52+1 bits of mantissa). For a table lookup, you can extract the mantissa in [0.5,1[ and exponent from the input (using a function like frexp), then normalize the mantissa in [64,256[ using multiplication by a suitable power of 2. mantissa *= 2^K exponent -= K After this, your input number is still mantissa*2^exponent. K must be 7 or 8, to obtain an even exponent. You can obtain the initial value for the iterations from a table containing all the square roots of the integral part of mantissa. Perform 4 iterations to get the square root r of mantissa. The result is r*2^(exponent/2), constructed using a function like ldexp. EDIT. I put some C++ code below to illustrate this. The OP's function sr1 with improved test takes 2.78s to compute 2^24 square roots; my function sr2 takes 1.42s, and the hardware sqrt takes 0.12s. #include <math.h> #include <stdio.h> double sr1(double x) { double last = 0; double r = x * 0.5; int maxIters = 100; for (int i = 0; i < maxIters; i++) { r = (r + x / r) / 2; if ( fabs(r - last) < 1.0e-10 ) break; last = r; } return r; } double sr2(double x) { // Square roots of values in 0..256 (rounded to nearest integer) static const int ROOTS256[] = { 0,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6,6, 7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9, 9,9,9,9,9,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,11,11,11,11,11, 11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12, 12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13, 13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14, 14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15, 15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16,16 }; // Normalize input int exponent; double mantissa = frexp(x,&exponent); // MANTISSA in [0.5,1[ unless X is 0 if (mantissa == 0) return 0; // X is 0 if (exponent & 1) { mantissa *= 128; exponent -= 7; } // odd exponent else { mantissa *= 256; exponent -= 8; } // even exponent // Here MANTISSA is in [64,256[ // Initial value on 4 bits double root = ROOTS256[(int)floor(mantissa)]; // Iterate for (int it=0;it<4;it++) { root = 0.5 * (root + mantissa / root); } // Restore exponent in result return ldexp(root,exponent>>1); } int main() { // Used to generate the table // for (int i=0;i<=256;i++) printf(",%.0f",sqrt(i)); double s = 0; int mx = 1<<24; // for (int i=0;i<mx;i++) s += sqrt(i); // 0.120s // for (int i=0;i<mx;i++) s += sr1(i); // 2.780s for (int i=0;i<mx;i++) s += sr2(i); // 1.420s }
Define a tolerance and return early when subsequent iterations fall within that tolerance.
Since you said the code below was not fast enough, try this: static double guess(double n) { return Math.Pow(10, Math.Log10(n) / 2); } It should be very accurate and hopefully fast. Here is code for the initial estimate described here. It appears to be pretty good. Use this code, and then you should also iterate until the values converge within an epsilon of difference. public static double digits(double x) { double n = Math.Floor(x); double d; if (d >= 1.0) { for (d = 1; n >= 1.0; ++d) { n = n / 10; } } else { for (d = 1; n < 1.0; ++d) { n = n * 10; } } return d; } public static double guess(double x) { double output; double d = Program.digits(x); if (d % 2 == 0) { output = 6*Math.Pow(10, (d - 2) / 2); } else { output = 2*Math.Pow(10, (d - 1) / 2); } return output; }
I have been looking at this as well for learning purposes. You may be interested in two modifications I tried. The first was to use a first order taylor series approximation in x0: Func<double, double> fNewton = (b) => { // Use first order taylor expansion for initial guess // http://www27.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=series+expansion+x^.5 double x0 = 1 + (b - 1) / 2; double xn = x0; do { x0 = xn; xn = (x0 + b / x0) / 2; } while (Math.Abs(xn - x0) > Double.Epsilon); return xn; }; The second was to try a third order (more expensive), iterate Func<double, double> fNewtonThird = (b) => { double x0 = b/2; double xn = x0; do { x0 = xn; xn = (x0*(x0*x0+3*b))/(3*x0*x0+b); } while (Math.Abs(xn - x0) > Double.Epsilon); return xn; }; I created a helper method to time the functions public static class Helper { public static long Time( this Func<double, double> f, double testValue) { int imax = 120000; double avg = 0.0; Stopwatch st = new Stopwatch(); for (int i = 0; i < imax; i++) { // note the timing is strictly on the function st.Start(); var t = f(testValue); st.Stop(); avg = (avg * i + t) / (i + 1); } Console.WriteLine("Average Val: {0}",avg); return st.ElapsedTicks/imax; } } The original method was faster, but again, might be interesting :)
Replacing "/ 2" by "* 0.5" makes this ~1.5 times faster on my machine, but of course not nearly as fast as the native implementation.
Well, the native Sqrt() function probably isn't implemented in C#, it'll most likely be done in a low-level language, and it'll certainly be using a more efficient algorithm. So trying to match its speed is probably futile. However, in regard to just trying to optimize your function for the heckuvit, the Wikipedia page you linked recommends the "starting guess" to be 2^floor(D/2), where D represents the number of binary digits in the number. You could give that an attempt, I don't see much else that could be optimized significantly in your code.
You can try r = x >> 1; instead of / 2 (also in the other place you device by 2). It might give you a slight edge. I would also move the 100 into the loop. Probably nothing, but we are talking about ticks in here. just checking it now. EDIT: Fixed the > into >>, but it doesn't work for doubles, so nevermind. the inlining of the 100 gave me no speed increase.