I am using the timeit.timeit function to time one of my own functions, but the time returned is in scientific notation.
import timeit
def func():
...
print(timeit.timeit(stmt="func()", setup="from __main__ import func", number=100000)/100000)
This returns something like 3.563012266666666e-05. I have used timeit before, but this has never happened. Anyone know why it is doing this?
It's happening because you're dividing it by 1000. If you don't do that then the output looks like this:
>>> print(timeit.timeit(stmt="func()", setup="from __main__ import func", number=100000))
>>> 0.009756448998814449
Python will show any large or small number—under or over a certain range—using scientific notation.
If you want to see the result as before, you can leverage Python's string formatting like this:
>>> t = timeit.timeit(stmt="func()", setup="from __main__ import func", number=100000)/100000
>>> f"{t:.20f}"
Here, the :.20 makes sure that it'll print the number up to 20 decimal places. However, do remember that by doing this, you're converting the float into a string. This will return:
>>> '0.00000009274555020966'
This is likely because your dividing after you retrieve the time. You can format the value when you print it by using f strings (f"{time:.4f}")
The .4f tells python to print the value as a floating point with 4 decimal places, you can make that as small or as large as you want to see the number of digits you want.
3.563012266666666e-05 is not really exponential form; it's just scientific notation. 3.563012266666666e-05 is equal to 0.00003563012266666666. Scientific notation is used to express either very large or very small numbers.
