In the battlefield, facing the enemy army, the general ask his aide-de-camp:
- How many soldiers do you think there are in the enemy ranks?
The aide looks for a little while and respond:
- One thousand and three, my general.
- Amazing! How can you tell this precise number so quickly?
- Very easy, my general! There are three in the first line, and about one thousand behind.
I like this joke a lot. And I think it teaches a lot, in a very simple and humorous manner. Performance is about measuring, calculating and quantifying. The values must be presented with the right precision, but no more. Otherwise, you are inventing.
I doubt you could report 67.953% usage average, but 68%. Or, perhaps even better, between 65% and 70%. You cannot arbitrarily add (absurd) precision. I'm not trying to teach error theory here. Only warning you to be careful when giving quantities.
I've always felt attracted to computer performance subjects: throughput, response time, sizing, bottlenecks, usage, capacity. I've not always seen clear, understandable and knowledgeable explanations on these subjects. With the arrival of the virtualization even more complexity is introduced: terms that represented constant values, like the machine capacity, gets blurred. What can be said about a virtual machine capacity if it is no longer a fixed value and may change from this hour to the next?
dimecres, 29 de gener del 2014
Absurd precision
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