How to efficiently select element in a list of lists?

Question

How can I write an efficient version of the following statement?

Cases[list, {_, feature_} /; feature < constant]; // AbsoluteTiming

List is of the form, list = {{feature11,feature12},...,{featuren1,featuren2}}. It has a length in the order of 10^5. On my laptop, a Macbook pro from last year it takes around 0.25s. However, I need to evaluate this expression a lot of times. Any suggestion. Thank you.

Answer 1

data = RandomReal[1, {500000, 2}];
constant = 0.3;
(ans1 = Cases[data, {_, feature_} /; feature < constant]); // AbsoluteTiming

{0.880057, Null}

(ans2 = Select[data, Last@# < constant &]); // AbsoluteTiming

{1.219078, Null}

(ans3 = Pick[data, Round[Last@# + (0.5 - constant)] & /@ data, 0]); // AbsoluteTiming

{0.110006, Null}

(ans4 = Pick[data, Round[data[[All, 2]] + (0.5 - constant)], 0]); // AbsoluteTiming

{0.045003, Null}

ans1 == ans2 == ans3 == ans4

True