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.

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

Because they already know it would be very slow, and putting specific numbers on that is helpful for them and for non-veterans too. Even with some wiggle room for "microbenchmarks are weird".