title: Execution time using time.time() in Python
body: <p>I wrote some code for a HackerRank problem (<a href="https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/acm-icpc-team" rel="nofollow">https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/acm-icpc-team</a>). </p>
  
  <pre><code>import time
  from itertools import combinations
  
  start_time = time.time()
  
  n,m = raw_input().strip().split(' ') # n = no of people and m = no of topics
  n,m = [int(n),int(m)]
  topic = []
  topic_i = 0
  for topic_i in xrange(n):
     topic_t = str(raw_input().strip())
     topic.append(topic_t)    # populate the topic[] list with the topics
  
  counts = []
  for list1, list2 in combinations(topic, 2):
     if list1 != list2:
        count = 0
        for i in xrange(m):
          if int(list1[i]) | int(list2[i]):
              count += 1
        counts.append(count)
  
  print max(counts)
  print counts.count(max(counts))
  
  print time.time() - start_time
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I try to run the code, I get an execution time of <code>8.37576699257</code> seconds. But my program got over in a jiffy. I have read that the <code>timeit()</code> function, by default, runs the function passed to it a million times. Does something similar happen here?</p>