Abstract
As we delve further into the data science/big data era, we create more and more forecasts or predictions for systems evaluation applications. Many practitioners use ratio variables as performance metrics, one of the most common being the benefit/cost (B/C) ratio of alternatives; however, ratio metrics are used extensively throughout disparate industries. There is significant risk associated with using ratio metrics, and in this paper, we focus on one simple trap that can result from forecasting a ratio metric. We illustrate and motivate the issues with a stylized television-viewing index forecasting problem and with two examples using real-world data. Our goal in this paper is to make systems practitioners aware of these pitfalls.
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Scherer, W.T., Adams, S. (2019). The Danger of Using Ratio Performance Metrics in System Evaluations. In: Adams, S., Beling, P., Lambert, J., Scherer, W., Fleming, C. (eds) Systems Engineering in Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00114-8_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00114-8_26
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