Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!qantel!lll-lcc!lll-crg!seismo!cmcl2!rna!cubsvax!peters From: peters@cubsvax.UUCP (Peter S. Shenkin) Newsgroups: net.arch Subject: Re: Incorrect Benchmark summary. Message-ID: <544@cubsvax.UUCP> Date: Sat, 27-Sep-86 14:22:01 EDT Article-I.D.: cubsvax.544 Posted: Sat Sep 27 14:22:01 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 06:16:10 EDT References: <322@oblio.UUCP> <20954@rochester.ARPA> <393@vaxb.calgary.UUCP> Reply-To: peters@cubsvax.UUCP (Peter S. Shenkin) Organization: Columbia Univ. Bio. CG Fac., NY Lines: 22 In article eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) writes: >> >> The averaging in this table is done incorrectly. As noted in a recent CACM >> article, normalized benchmark results should be averaged with a geometric >> mean, not an arithmetic mean. >> Radford Neal >> The University of Calgary > >There is no clear cut evidence that the geometric mean is any more correct >than any other [Re: the Flemming and Wallace paper]. Jack Wolton of >Los Alamos published a paper in 1984... >This paper touted the HARMONIC mean as the "correct" mean.... Note that if the values being averaged don't have too much spread, all these means are about the same; also, even if the distributions of values have large spread, I believe the distributions being compared have to be rather different in form for the different methods of calculating the mean to give different rank-orders. (But I seem to have missed the original article to which this refers, so I'm not sure what's being compared!) Peter S. Shenkin Columbia Univ. Biology Dept., NY, NY 10027 {philabs,rna}!cubsvax!peters cubsvax!peters@columbia.ARPA