I woke up with a question: "how the heck do computers calculate the square root?" This video is a fun exercise in trying to write my own square root algorithm. SOURCE CODE below.
- Source Code: github.com/townofdon/square-root-algorithm-js
- Diagrams: whimsical.com/square-root-algorithm-RiiUwd4XAGYjxCXhG6mRSB
After some research, I discovered there are LOTS of alternative algorithms for calculating the square of a number. Even though the math was over my head, I did find some takeaways:
- Bit shift operations are very useful for highly optimized square root calculations
- There exist algorithms that iterate over each number pair in a Base 10 number, meaning the iterations would directly correlate to the number of digits (as opposed to the minimum 60 iterations in my algorithm)
- See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_computing_square_roots#Decimal_(base_10)
For a cool parallel - check out this video on the fast inverse square calculation found in the Quake engine source code: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p8u_k2LIZyo.html
For more info about the Early Return Pattern - check out this link: forum.freecodecamp.org/t/the-return-early-pattern-explained-with-javascript-examples/19364
12 июл 2021
