Why is vectorization faster
问题 I've been learning R for a while now, and have come across a lot of advice to programming types like myself to vectorize operations. Being a programmer, I'm interested as to why / how it's faster. An example: n = 10^7 # populate with random nos v=runif(n) system.time({vv<-v*v; m<-mean(vv)}); m system.time({for(i in 1:length(v)) { vv[i]<-v[i]*v[i] }; m<-mean(vv)}); m This gave user system elapsed 0.04 0.01 0.07 [1] 0.3332091 user system elapsed 36.68 0.02 36.69 [1] 0.3332091 The most obvious