<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">OK, yes, but that's still counting papers, just with a more sensible scoring matrix. It has exactly the same problem in really demonstrating in a grant proposal or budget justification just what the ROI is going to be in those terms.<div><br></div><div>It's quite funny watching vendors flounder whenever they claim they can offer great ROI and you ask them to actually do so. Usually their crude spreadsheets end up telling you're going to spend $millions more using their solution.<div><br></div><div>Regards,<br><div><br></div><div>Tim</div><div><br><div>
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">-- <br>Dr Tim Cutts<br>Acting Head of Scientific Computing</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute<br><br><br></div></div></div></div>
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<br><div><div>On 26 Nov 2013, at 14:54, "Peter St. John" <<a href="mailto:peter.st.john@gmail.com">peter.st.john@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Oh there is another metric besides number of papers published; Citation Indexing and Impact Factor, the predecessors of Google "Page" Ranking.<div>Instead of counting papers, or counting citations to papers, you count citations weighted by their own citations, recursively.</div>
<div>So one year Andrew Wiles publishes two papers. Those two papers are read by maybe six specialists in arithmetic algebraic geometry. But those six guys are read by many more, etc (the recursion converges rapidly, which is why Page Ranking is so effective), so Wiles' Impact Factor is extravagant.</div>
<div>Peter</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Tim Cutts <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tjrc@sanger.ac.uk" target="_blank">tjrc@sanger.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><div class="im"><div>On 25 Nov 2013, at 23:03, Prentice Bisbal <<a href="mailto:prentice.bisbal@rutgers.edu" target="_blank">prentice.bisbal@rutgers.edu</a>> wrote:</div>
<br><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">4. I went to a BoF on ROI on HPC investment. All the presentations in<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">the BoF frustrated me. Not because they were poorly done, but because<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">they tried to measure the value of a cluster by number of papers<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">published that used that HPC resource. I think that's a crappy, crappy<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">metric, but haven't been able to come up with a better one myself yet. I<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">was very vocal with my comments and criticisms of the presentations, so<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">if any of the presenters are reading this now, I apologize for<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">hi-jacking your BoF. Getting good ROI on a cluster is close to my heart,<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">but is also difficult to quantify and measure. I hope I can be part of<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">the discussion next year.</span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
</blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div>I can't think of another metric either. At the top of my organisation, publications are *the* key metric that all scientists are judged on. Publications are *the* product of any scientific institution. We don't sell anything, so we can't measure revenue. All we can measure are papers published per unit time. The problem is that the publication of the paper is very distant from the building of your compute infrastructure, so it's very hard to put a sensible number on ROI for this stuff.</div>
<div class="im"><br><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">7. The cover band 'London Calling' played the IBM Platform<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">Computing/Intel party again. Despite calling themselves 'London Calling'<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">they still do not play any Clash songs. They are a good cover band, but<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">it's starting to get boring seeing the same band play the same set year<span> </span></span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;display:inline!important;float:none">after year.</span><br style="font-family:monospace;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:-webkit-auto;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px">
</blockquote></div></div><div><br></div><div>It did at least have more atmosphere than either of the parties I went to earlier in the week, which were pretty much like drinking in a morgue. I won't name them, but we probably all know which ones. Both were at establishments on the 16th street Mall. I had a lot more fun and useful conversation in bars after abandoning ship…</div>
<div class="im"><div><br></div><div>Tim</div><br>
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