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Subject: Impartial observer: I'm afraid this really is NOT raw data

Author: George Sobala

Date: 14:02:48 09/03/02

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I have no axe to grind with either side. In fact, through these discussions
Robert Hyatt's explanations seem considered and rational, whilst Vincent seems
to be going off the deep end.

HOWEVER there is absolutely NO WAY that the following table is genuine raw data.
The times in seconds are all far too-perfect divisions of the time taken by one
processor. Real life does not spew out such perfection. Let me explain. E.g. in
pos 1, for 4 processors note that 2830/832 is 3.4014423. This is really close to
3.4 - so much so that 2830/3.4 is 832-plus-a-bit. Work your way down the columns
and you will see that the time for x processors in seconds is far far far too
often just what you would get if you divided the 1-processor time by a divisor
with one decimal place  (e.g. 3.4, 3.6, 3.7 etc) - not a second or two more or a
second or two less. Why shouldn't we frequently see times that would be the
result of 2-decimal place divisors, such as 3.43 or 3.58?

Conclusion: this is inescapably NOT raw data. (And if you want "proof", Dr
Hyatt, take it to a statistician at your university.) However, that does not
automatically mean that it is invented or spurious. For example, the original
data in seconds could have been recorded, divided out and rounded down to
produce ratios accurate to one decimal place, and then (with this raw data lost
or mislaid) for the purpose of the publication a "back-calculation" may have
been done using the rounded divisors.

On September 03, 2002 at 16:12:13, Robert Hyatt wrote:


>Here it is:
>
>
>First, times in seconds:
>
>pos     1       2       4       8       16
>1       2,830   1,415   832     435     311
>2       2,849   1,424   791     438     274
>3       3,274   1,637   884     467     239
>4       2,308   1,154   591     349     208
>5       1,584   792     440     243     178
>6       4,294   2,147   1,160   670     452
>7       1,888   993     524     273     187
>8       7,275   3,637   1,966   1,039   680
>9       3,940   1,970   1,094   635     398
>10      2,431   1,215   639     333     187
>11      3,062   1,531   827     425     247
>12      2,518   1,325   662     364     219
>13      2,131   1,121   560     313     192
>14      1,871   935     534     296     191
>15      2,648   1,324   715     378     243
>16      2,347   1,235   601     321     182
>17      4,884   2,872   1,878   1,085   814
>18      646     358     222     124     84
>19      2,983   1,491   785     426     226
>20      7,473   3,736   1,916   1,083   530
>21      3,626   1,813   906     489     237
>22      2,560   1,347   691     412     264
>23      2,039   1,019   536     323     206
>24      2,563   1,281   657     337     178
>



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