[Rd] fairly OT: profiling

[Thomas Lumley]

The following is from Eric Raymond's new book on Unix programming.

  You'll get more insight from using profilers if you think of them less
  as ways to collect individual performance numbers, and more as ways to
  learn how performance varies as a function of interesting parameters
  ... Try fitting those numbers to a model, using open-source software
  like R or a good-quality proprietary tool like MATLAB.

It's interesting to see the emphasis on statistical analysis of profiling
data (as well as the fact that R is sufficiently well-known not to need
explanation (or a reference or link)).

	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle