Limit search for high-precision coefficients and constants?

[fishwithfros]

I have a particular PySR project that seems to spend lots of time trying to dial in levels of precision on coefficients and constants that I just don't need. For this project, I could easily live with two significant digits.

Is there a way to reduce the precision of the coefficients and constants, and would it help the search process at all?

[MilesCranmer]

You can reduce the frequency of constant optimizations with optimize_probability or even turn it off altogether with should_optimize_constants=False. That will give you a decent speed up.

You can also play around with the mutate_constant parameter, which lets the evolutionary algorithm tweak the constants.

There’s also the precision parameter, which you could try lowering to 16, although it probably depends on your CPU whether this actually gives a speed up (for me, it was actually slower).

Cheers,
Miles