From: Steven Jenkins <steven.jenkins@...>
Date: 2005-05-18T01:54:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Odeum vs. Lucene Performance

Stephen Kellett wrote:
> In message <428A03C1.50202@ieee.org>, Steven Jenkins 
> <steven.jenkins@ieee.org> writes
> 
>> and figure out why randomness plays such a large role in the performance
>> of my system.
> 
> The execution of other programs running on your multi-process capable 
> computer. Hence my rationale.

Your rationale invoked an analogy to estimation of proportions, which, 
as I noted, does not apply to the problem at hand. The mere existence of 
random disturbances does not imply the need to run 1000 tests.

The right way to do it is to calculate the variances, or better still, 
the confidence intervals of the performance estimates. Pardon my 
bluntness, but anything else is hand-waving.

Steve