Do you think a slightly more complex piece of math that can't be replaced with an equation would have significantly different performance from the benchmark?

I don't. So the simple math just makes things easier, it doesn't harm results.

Your suggestion to skip the math entirely is the apple-smash.

> Since nobody does large loops in python

Oh I doubt that.

Numpy would be fine as a different entry.

I don't know whether or not a more complex piece of math would change the outcome, so I would err on the side of not making assumptions until I had done more benchmarks and investigated the inner workings more. You probably know more about C than I do and might be able to make that assumption more confidently, but I think most people know less than either of us, and will read too much into a single statistic without context.

Nobody who cares about performance enough to look at a benchmark like this would do large loops in pure python.