Experimental Methods in Computer Science – Exercise 1

Experimental Methods in Computer Science

Exercise 1 – Simple Display of Data

Goals

Background

Experiments often produce many numbers. Thus it is very important to choose exactly what data to show, and to choose the best way to show it. This typically means using a graphical display. And there are many options:

Moreover, the above can be used repeatedly, combined with each other, etc.

In addition, there is the technical issue of preparing graphs. As you will need to plot graphs for this and future exercises, you should select and learn to use some plotting tool. Options include

Assignment

The data is a pair of measurements of how network bandwidth depends on the size of the messages that are being transmitted. Two such measurements have been performed, and the results are available as dataset 1 and dataset 2. The format is simply two coumns: in each row, the first number is the message size in bytes, and the second is the achieved bandwidth in Mb/s.

Your task is simply to show both these data sets together. Think about what graphical form to use. Don't forget to label the axes, provide a legend or annotations, etc.

Submit

Use moodle to submit a report on your work, in pdf. Do not send me a Microsoft word (.doc) file. The report should include

  1. Your names, logins, and IDs
  2. A short explanation of what you did, and why. As this is a very simple exercise, the explanation can be a one-liner.
  3. The output plot.
Submission deadline is Monday, 23/3/09, so I can give feedback in class on Tuesday.

Please do the exercise in pairs. Use this to collaborate and discuss how to get the best solution, not to divide the work between you ("I do this course, you do that course").

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