4 ms·

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of my favorite books! 0 in this case is not really a relevant value (since that would mean transforming t

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of my favorite books! 0 in this case is not really a relevant value (since that would mean transforming the input into something infinitely large). The functional identity value / origin here is 1x. Here's what that looks like [1]. To me, this is a significantly less useful image. But maybe that stems from a lot of comfort with both the subject matter and the detail log-log plots that I work with to evaluate zstd performance, e.g. [2]. [1] https://imgur.com/gU2Gdf6 https://imgur.com/gU2Gdf6 [2] https://github.com/facebook/zstd/pull/1317#issuecomment-426032139 https://github.com/facebook/zstd/pull/1317#issuecomment-4260...

hinkley 8y ago
Hey thanks for the new chart, and you're right about 1x. But we might have to disagree because I don't think this graph is that bad. I can see a bunch of talking points in this graph that are about strategy instead of about why I hate bad graphs. First, that data point for lz4 out around 820 MB/s kind of throws the groove off of that graph. Despite that, I would still suggest you prune the graph off at 850 or 900 to reduce the squish of the horizontal data (pruning the graph to put the last value at 100% of width or height isn't considered a no-no). One of the things I can see now but couldn't before is that the size/speed tradeoff is pretty linear except for the giant dog-leg around 3.6:1, and a less pronounced but still notable one occurs at 2.9:1. If I sat down with my team to discuss this chart I'd suggest we agree that we aren't interested in anything above 3.6:1. And then I'd suggest we look at everything above 2.9:1, but my eye is on 3.2:1 (where zlib tops out and is 1/10th the speed). If they don't like 2.9:1, then the next interesting point is at about 2.7:1 when zlib bottoms out. We're already at such a high bandwidth rate that something else is probably going to be the bottleneck.

hinkley 8y ago

Hey thanks for the new chart, and you're right about 1x. But we might have to disagree because I don't think this graph is that bad. I can see a bunch of talking points in this graph that are about strategy instead of about why I hate bad graphs. First, that data point for lz4 out around 820 MB/s kind of throws the groove off of that graph. Despite that, I would still suggest you prune the graph off at 850 or 900 to reduce the squish of the horizontal data (pruning the graph to put the last value at 100% of width or height isn't considered a no-no). One of the things I can see now but couldn't before is that the size/speed tradeoff is pretty linear except for the giant dog-leg around 3.6:1, and a less pronounced but still notable one occurs at 2.9:1. If I sat down with my team to discuss this chart I'd suggest we agree that we aren't interested in anything above 3.6:1. And then I'd suggest we look at everything above 2.9:1, but my eye is on 3.2:1 (where zlib tops out and is 1/10th the speed). If they don't like 2.9:1, then the next interesting point is at about 2.7:1 when zlib bottoms out. We're already at such a high bandwidth rate that something else is probably going to be the bottleneck.