On Jan 22, 2016 11:52 AM, "Colin Watson" <<a href="mailto:cjwatson@ubuntu.com">cjwatson@ubuntu.com</a>> wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 09:09:10AM -0600, Dustin Kirkland wrote: > > According to the 502 servers surveyed, 97.2% use less than 1.5 GB of > > /tmp. > > I'm not expressing any particular view on the overall topic either way > here, but for the sake of accuracy, I believe that that is not in fact > what the data you collected says. It says that, at the point in time > when the data was collected, 97.2% of those servers were currently using > less than 1.5 GB of /tmp. Temporary files are temporary, and often > bursty; a single point sample might line up with the high-water-mark on > those servers, and it might not. But if you're going to quote > statistics to three significant figures, then people reading it might > reasonably expect more precision in their construction. That's absolutely true and I've tried to accurately express that when I've quoted these stats. You've identified a sentence where the wording was poor. In fairness, I stated the caveats, including that one, up front in the detailed analysis published at: <a href="http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/01/data-driven-analysis-tmp-on-tmpfs.html">http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/01/data-driven-analysis-tmp-on-tmpfs.html</a> I should have written: Of the 502 servers surveyed, 97.2% were using less than 1.5 GB of /tmp (at the time the data was collected). Thanks for the note. Dustin > -- > Colin Watson [<a href="mailto:cjwatson@ubuntu.com">cjwatson@ubuntu.com</a>] > > -- > ubuntu-devel mailing list > <a href="mailto:ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com</a> > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel</a>