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Technology Stocks : Applix is back in action -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sr K who wrote (2083)	1/7/1998 11:27:00 PM
From: Kashish King	Respond to of 3014

...phony percentages like 625%...If task A takes 145 seconds and a different method can do it in 20 seconds, would anyone who knows math say it was 625% faster? It's 86.2+% faster. Simple arithmetic, or math as you call it, isn't the problem: the problem is with the term faster and your interpretation of it. The difference between one minute 45 seconds and 20 seconds is 125 seconds and that's 625%. When it comes to comparing execution speeds, your number is of little value. What you are suggesting is that Applix is 86.2% faster than a product taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 145 seconds to complete the benchmark task in question. By simple extension, you are claiming that Applix is 98.62% faster than a product taking 1,450 seconds and 99.98% faster than any product taking 145,000 seconds to complete. Apparently, one could take a couple of thousand years to execute and Applix would never be more than slightly under 100% faster than such a product. The approach you have taken yields meaningless results. Applix, on the other hand, appears to be a very straight shooting company and they have chosen a meaningful definition of faster which you can use to relate their products to that of other companies.

To: Sr K who wrote (2083)	1/8/1998 8:43:00 AM
From: Warren Whitney	Respond to of 3014

I agree with you on the "more than 100 times smaller". You can never be more than 100% smaller, (or 1X smaller) because that would be negative size. This has been a pet peeve of mine - and I agree it lowers their credibility. However, Rod is correct about the speed claims - something can be more than 100% faster than something else. For example, it's correct to say that an airliner at 600 mph is ten times as fast (nine time faster) than an auto at 60 mph. It is not correct, however, to say that the airliner takes ten times less time. That would be meaningless. By the way, the test results were reported by Applix but the benchmark was designed by the OLAP council (http://www.olapcouncil.org/) and the report includes comments by various people outside Applix including Nigel Pendse, lead author of The OLAP Report. Obviously an attempt to add some amount of "independent, outside" flavor. I myself have no insight, but I hope the results are as significant as Applix claim.