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Unless you are very lucky, the length of your machine’s clock “tick” is probably much longer than the time it takes simple function to run. For example, on the IBM RT, the clock resolution is 1/50 second. This means that if a function is only called a few times, then only the first couple decimal places are really meaningful.
Note however, that if a function is called many times, then the statistical averaging across all calls should result in increased resolution. For example, on the IBM RT, if a function is called a thousand times, then a resolution of tens of microseconds can be expected.