Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

The problem with percentiles is that you are discarding data points. e.g. Measuring the 98th percentile involves discarding the top 2% of data.

The problem with that is, sometimes the top 2% you are discarding might correlate to your top 2% of customers...and you are literally throwing their data away by using percentiles. Not good.

My recommendation is to pick two aggregation types. Maybe Percentile and Maximum, or Maximum and Mean, or Percentile and Mean. You can't really go wrong with that approach.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: