What Do You 'Mean'? Revisiting Statistics for Web Response Time Measurements
David M. Ciemiewicz · Int. CMG Conference · 2001
Using empirical data from an Internet/WAN distributed Web response time measurement system, this paper explores the relative applicability and usefulness of the geometric mean and geometric standard deviation, and introduces the lognormal distribution for quantifying the response time measurements. These statistics are particularly useful in the areas of Web content performance comparison and SLA monitoring of service providers such as Content Providers, CDNs, ASPs, MSPs, and Web Hosting companies. Some surprisingly counter-intuitive results are identified and discussed. Warning: improper use of traditional averages and standard deviations can financially hurt you, if not simply mislead you.