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Come to think of it, I'm sure there are other optimisations you could do as well.

It could also simply check the most common numbers first. We can spider the Internet and collect all usages of numbers, sort them, and find out what the optimal order is.

True - given probability weights, the optimal decision order would be a Huffman tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding

This is a great idea! Intuitively, I think it might make the program 3x size though?: first `if` for ==, then an `else if` for <, then `else` for >.

it would be extremely humorous if it actually *reduced* the speed since it required loading so much more code.

I don't think it would help, you'd still need the 4 billion if statements to decide whether to take the left or the right branch from the root.

Yes but you would only need to visit 32 of them, so it would run much faster (around a hundred million times faster).

I think Scarblac's point is that using a > comparison would be cheating, and you'd have to do that as a series of 4 billion if/else statements too.

Fair enough, comparisons are dangerously close to arithmetic and we can't have any of that.