SPARC: Statistical Performance Analysis With Relevance Conclusions

The performance of one computer relative to another is traditionally characterized through benchmarking, a practice occasionally deficient in statistical rigor. The performance is often trivialized through simplified measures, such as the approach of central tendency, but doing so risks a loss of perspective of the variability and non-determinism of modern computer systems. Authentic performance evaluations are derived from statistical methods that accurately interpret and assess data. Methods that currently exist within performance comparison frameworks are limited in efficacy, statistical inference is either overtly simplified or altogether avoided. A prevalent criticism from computer performance literature suggests that the results from difference hypothesis testing lack substance. To address this problem, we propose a new framework, SPARC, that pioneers a synthesis of difference and equivalence hypothesis testing to provide relevant conclusions. It is a union of three key components: (i) identifying either superiority or similarity through difference and equivalence hypotheses (ii) scalable methodology (based on the number of benchmarks), and (iii) a conditional feedback loop from test outcomes that produces informative conclusions of relevance, equivalence, trivial, or indeterminant. We present an experimental analysis characterizing the performance of a trio of RISC-V open-source processors to evaluate SPARC and its efficacy compared to similar frameworks

The new utilitarians? Studies in the origins and early intellectual associations of Fabianism

This thesis concerns the intellectual origins and early associations of Fabianism. It concentrates on the period of the 1880's and early 1890's during which time the Fabian Society was founded and its basic doctrines were formed. Its principals are the small group of intellectuals who played the major role in working out its basic theories. The thesis is arranged as a series of studies of five thinkers or schools of thought with whom the Fabians had important intellectual associations. Each of the five studies seeks both to supplement and supply a revision of the received account of the formative influences and intellectual traditions which shaped the development of Fabian Socialism. The importance of Comte and the English Positivists, Marx, J. S. Mill and the Utilitarians upon the formation of Fabian thought is a matter of existing recognition, whereas the apparently paradoxical influence of Herbert Spencer has been previously neglected, to the detriment of a proper understanding of the early development of Fabianism. A recognition of Spencer's importance requires a reappraisal not a rejection of the generally received view of the Fabians as the 'New Utilitarians.' Fabian theory emerged out of a process of blending and modifying the traditions of Radicalism, Positivism and Socialism. The emergence of that theory was conditioned by the experience of middle class intellectuals facing new social and economic uncertainties in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is as intellectuals who see themselves as practical men that the Fabians most clearly emerge as the 'New Utilitarians'

International Navigation Market

Economic record of human society in the last period has involved an unprecedented growth of world trade, trafficking of basic raw materials needed for industry and agriculture, and trade in industrial products or food. To the huge volume of movement of goods, shipping takes back the role of first order both quantitatively as well as efficiency. This situation is encouraged by factors such as diversification of trade, number of participants in this process and the increasingly complex international trade

International Navigation Market

Economic record of human society in the last period has involved an unprecedented growth of world trade, trafficking of basic raw materials needed for industry and agriculture, and trade in industrial products or food. To the huge volume of movement of goods, shipping takes back the role of first order both quantitatively as well as efficiency. This situation is encouraged by factors such as diversification of trade, number of participants in this process and the increasingly complex international trade