13
votes
2answers
288 views

Why does iterating Prime in reverse order require much more time?

Say I would like to display the $10$ greatest primes that are less than $10^5$. I could do the following: ...
5
votes
1answer
185 views

Can we know the background code associated with basic mathematica functions

I wanted to know how computers calculate basic functions like Sqrt so first I checked how humans do it I found that they use something called "Newton's method" that ...
21
votes
1answer
339 views

How are MemberQ and FreeQ so fast?

I would like to understand the implementation that allows MemberQ and FreeQ to be as fast as they are. I noticed this thanks to ...