The software empiricist experimental disciplines & computer measurements
Kenneth W. Kolence · ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review · 1973
The introduction and use of the capability for quantitative measurements into the field of computer science must inexorably lead to the development and use of experimental approaches and techniques to discover, understand, and verify relationships between the observables of what is today loosely called computer performance. The reason for this column appearing as a regular feature in PER is to assist in the process of bridging the gap in both directions between the practitioners and theorists of the field. In the first column in this series, we introduced the concepts of empiricism and the initial discoveries of invariances of values as foundations of this new aspect of computer science. With this issue, we shall begin to investigate the requirements and methodologies by which this approach can be applied to the common benefit of both the practical and theoretical orientations. When a particular topic can be demonstrated with actual data or equivalent means, it will be the topic of a separate article.