# Why is naive symbolic differentiation slow?

In another article about demystifying Automatic Differentiation (AD) I explained how to use the key idea of AD to calculate derivatives in time linear in the size of a symbolic expression, after mentioning that the naive approach is quadratic. But why is the naive approach quadratic? In this article I’ll explain.

Recall the diffEval function which implements the key idea of AD.

diffEval :: Double -> E -> (Double, Double)
diffEval x = ev where
ev = \case
X            -> (x, 1)
One          -> (1, 0)
Zero         -> (0, 0)
Negate e     -> let (ex, ed) = ev e
in (-ex, -ed)
Sum e e'     -> let (ex, ed)   = ev e
(ex', ed') = ev e'
in (ex + ex', ed + ed')
Product e e' -> let (ex, ed)   = ev e
(ex', ed') = ev e'
in (ex * ex', ex * ed' + ed * ex')
Exp e        -> let (ex, ed) = ev e
in (exp ex, exp ex * ed)

If you look at how each expression node is handled you’ll notice that there is one recursive call per child node, leading to linear run time. An alternative implementation could have been this:

diffEvalSlow :: Double -> E -> (Double, Double)
diffEvalSlow x = ev where
ev = \case
X            -> (x, 1)
One          -> (1, 0)
Zero         -> (0, 0)
Negate e     -> let ex = fst (ev e)
ed = snd (ev e)
in (-ex, -ed)
Sum e e'     -> let ex   = fst (ev e)
ed   = snd (ev e)
ex'  = fst (ev e')
ed'  = snd (ev e')
in (ex + ex', ed + ed')
Product e e' -> let ex   = fst (ev e)
ed   = snd (ev e)
ex'  = fst (ev e')
ed'  = snd (ev e')
in (ex * ex', ex * ed' + ed * ex')
Exp e        -> let ex = fst (ev e)
ed = snd (ev e)
in (exp ex, exp ex * ed)

diffEvalSlow has two recursive calls per child node, leading to quadratic run time.

> mapM_ (print . snd . flip diffEval bigExpression)
[0.00009, 1, 1.00001]
3.2478565715995278e-6
1.0
1.0100754777229357
-- ^^ Trust me, it was fast

> mapM_ (print . snd . flip diffEvalSlow bigExpression)
[0.00009, 1, 1.00001]
3.2478565715995278e-6
1.0
1.0100754777229357
-- ^^ Trust me, it was slow

There is a similar reason for the slowness of the naive approach to calculating the derivative of symbolic expressions. The naive approach is to first diff the expression, and then eval it. diff and eval are as follows:

eval :: Double -> E -> Double
eval x = ev where
ev = \case
X            -> x
One          -> 1
Zero         -> 0
Negate e     -> -ev e
Sum e e'     -> ev e + ev e'
Product e e' -> ev e * ev e'
Exp e        -> exp (ev e)

diff :: E -> E
diff = \case
X            -> One
One          -> Zero
Zero         -> Zero
Negate e     -> Negate (diff e)
Sum e e'     -> Sum (diff e) (diff e')
Product e e' -> Product e (diff e') Sum Product (diff e) e'
Exp e        -> Exp e Product diff e

You can see that, like diffEval, both of these functions have only one recursive call per child node, leading to linear run time in the size of their input. So what’s going on? Why is composing them quadratic?

Have a look at the Product case

Product e e' -> Product e (diff e') Sum Product (diff e) e'

There are only two recursive calls to diff, but it doubles the number of child nodes from two to four. The key observation is

The size of the output of diff can be quadratic in the size of the input!

eval then runs over this quadratic sized output, so the run time of eval composed with diff can be quadratic in the size of the original input.

The Exp case doubles the number of nodes too, as would potential cases for Sin, Cos or any other function where the derivative is given by the chain rule.

## Conclusion

The key idea of AD is to evaluate e and its derivative in one recursive call, leading to linear run time, rather than doubling the amount of work which needs to be done at each level, which leads to quadratic run time.