Little explorations with HP calculators (no Prime)

[DavidM]

So if I understand correctly (and I certainly may not ), you are essentially doing a table lookup using some target value (that corresponds to column 1) and returning the result (column 3). You do this by sequentially looking through each value until you find the appropriate stopping point.

Here's a couple thoughts:

- If there's a functional relationship between columns 1 and 3 in the table, you could simply apply the function to the target, round the result as needed, and you're done. This should be significantly faster than a lookup.

- Alternatively, you could map the target value to an index, then grab the column 3 value with that index. I would think that would also be faster, though not quite as much as the above. It would still require knowing the functional relationship of the target value to the index, of course.

- Because the table is pre-sorted, you could use a binary search of the column-1 value instead of sequential. Messier code, but would most likely be faster in the long run due to fewer comparisons being required. I'd try the others first, though.