6 ms·
> What’s remarkable about this result is that it does not depend on the precise distribution of the requests, the order in which requests are processed or any o
by DougMerritt 13y ago
> What’s remarkable about this result is that it does not depend on the precise distribution of the requests, the order in which requests are processed or any other variable that might have conceivably affected the result.
It says that (# requests) = (# requests / time) * time
There is nothing else "that might have conceivably affected the result", it's just algebraic cancellation.
Everything else that might have mattered is ruled out by saying "stable system" and saying that all variables are averages.
I'm not saying it's not useful, but that's an awfully "gee whiz" tone to use to comment on r = (r/t) * t
This part is more worthy of an exclamation point, since it makes clear a practical impact:
> Because L is the minimum of all these limits, the OS scheduler suddenly dropped our capacity, L, from the high 100Ks-low millions, to well under 20,000!
- pron 13y agoWell, it's not quite as simple as that. We're talking about a stochastic process here, and while a "hand-wavy" proof may satisfy some, there's a Little ;) more to it: http://www.ece.virginia.edu/~mv/edu/715/lectures/littles-law/littles-law.pdf http://www.ece.virginia.edu/~mv/edu/715/lectures/littles-law...
- DougMerritt 13y agoFair enough, although even that terse lecture hand-waved (by leaving it to a reference) about ergodic systems. I think the deeper point is along the lines of Wigner's classic "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_... It happens to be the case that elementary dimensional analysis is sufficient in the case in hand -- and it often is.