[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12834) amortize()

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12834 >

Benoit Hudson wrote:
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12834 >
> 
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 02:47:03PM -0700, Brian Dunstan wrote:
> 
>><URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12834 >
>>
>>I noticed that the amortize() function uses a very
>>clever, but complicated, algorithm.
> 
> 
> This code is astounding.  Why don't we do this calculation in
> floating-point?  It would be (with casts to doubles made beforehand):
>         double discount = 1.0 - 1.0 / ((double)MORT);
>         return benefit * pow(discount, delay);
> or
>         return (int) (benefit * pow(discount,delay) + 0.5);
> if you want to round.

Ohmigod.

The crazy thing is, I'm sure this is done to be more efficient but the
end result is it makes the calculation O(delay) instead of O(log(delay)).

-jason