Good article. However, it is missing the reason why load averages include tasks waiting for disc/swap. One of the things that the load average is sometimes use

Good article. However, it is missing the reason why load averages include tasks waiting for disc/swap. One of the things that the load average is sometimes used for is to work out whether it is appropriate to start some more processes running on a system. For example, make has a "-l" option, which prevents more parallel jobs being run while the load is above a supplied number. When a system is thrashing due to insufficient RAM, then the load average will be high, and this option will appropriately prevent more tasks being started which would make the thrashing worse. If the load average was just based on CPU, then it would be low while thrashing, and using that make option could lead to complete system collapse.