<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">I think we need to be using tests with the fewest assumptions possible. I don’t think there are many assumptions that would hold for all the benchmarks.<br><div apple-content-edited="true">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;">Chris Matthews</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;"><a href="mailto:chris.matthews@apple.com">chris.matthews@apple.com</a></span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;">phone: 36335</span><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"></div></div></div>
</div>
<br><div><div>On Jun 30, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Anton Korobeynikov <<a href="mailto:anton@korobeynikov.info">anton@korobeynikov.info</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">Hi Tobias,<br><br><blockquote type="cite">I trust your knowledge about statistics, but am wondering why ministat (and<br>it's t-test) is promoted as a statistical sane tool for benchmarking<br>results.<br></blockquote>I do not know... Ask author of ministat?<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Is the use of the t-test for benchmark results a bad idea in<br>general?<br></blockquote>No, in general. But one should be aware about the assumptions of the<br>underlying theory. t-test is fine as soon as our data follows the<br>normal distribution (and hence the test would be exact) or the sample<br>size is large (then we have the asymptotic normality of the mean due<br>to CLT).<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Would ministat be a better tool if it implemented the<br>Wilcoxon/Mann-Whitney test?<br></blockquote>The precision would be much better for small sample sizes (say, in range 10-50).<br><br>But in any case, never trust someone who will claim he can reliably<br>estimate the variance from 3 data points.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Is there anything stopping us from implementing such a test and exposing its<br>results in the UI?<br></blockquote>I do not think so...<br><br>--<br>With best regards, Anton Korobeynikov<br>Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics, Saint Petersburg State University<br>_______________________________________________<br>LLVM Developers mailing list<br><a href="mailto:LLVMdev@cs.uiuc.edu">LLVMdev@cs.uiuc.edu</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> <a href="http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/">http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu</a><br><a href="http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev">http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev</a></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>