Foreword

The course is fundamentally unchanged from last year, however the material can be changed slightly or some specific advanced topics may change. This page is changed during the whole semester: It is the tool I use to give you studying material, info related to the exam, the timetable, and so on.

Please, drop by frequently to avoid missing important things!

Program and Methodology

Please, refer to ESSE3 and the syllabus relative to Performance Evaluation for the official course content.
I report PDF of the program here , but this is not the official source, nor what will be attached to your diploma supplement.

Textbook

K.S. Trivedi
"Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing, and Computer Science Applications"
Wiley-Interscience; 2001
ISBN: 0-471-33341-7
can be bought on-line AT Amazon or directly from the Wiley Web Site .

2-3 copies are available in the University and Faculties Libraries;

We also make some reference to
G. Bolch, S. Greiner, H. de Meer, K.S. Trivedi,
"Queueing Networks and Markov Chains : Modeling and Performance Evaluation With Computer Science Applications"
Wiley-Interscience; 1998
ISBN: 0-471-19366-6
(can be bought on-line AT Amazon or directly from the Wiley Web Site).
This is a more advanced and complete textbook on Performance Modeling, with a lot of references to advanced material for model solutions.


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Esams

The exam is written, lasting normally 3 hours, mainly based on exercises, plus a possible oral integration that either you can ask if you're not satisfied with the written part (beware that the result is not necessarily additive!), or I can ask for, if I cannot formulate a proper judgment after the written part.
The exam can include exercises and theoretical, open questions as well.

Past Exams

• Tuesday Jan. 9 -- Text
• Tuesday Feb. 13 -- Text
• July 18 -- Text
• August 30 -- Text

Forthcoming Dates

• Together with the exams of the AA 2007/08

Additional Material and Slides

There is nothing that can substitute the textbook, but I post here all the material that can be useful in completing your preparation in performance modeling, starting from the slides I sometimes use in class.

Slides and lesson support

• Some official definitions and taxonomy of evaluation and modeling PDF

• Thanks to Prof. Stefano Bonaccorsi, those who have not followed an in-depth course on Probability, can use his course "dispense" (in Italian).
• Also in Italian are the following lecture notes on Markov Chains and Queueing Networks prepared by Profs. Marco Ajmone Marsan e Fabio Neri, who I thanks for the right of use they granted me.
  • Catene di Markov
  • Sistemi a Coda e Reti di Code
  Please remember these are notes from a different course, thus they do not substitute the textbook, nor they cover all and only the material we do (while can cover some parts we do not or just mention).
• Definitions and properties of transforms can be found on the
  • mathworld site
  The list is not complete and there are no theormes or demonstrations, nor many examples, but it is a good reference starting point.
• PostScript files of the comparison figures between loss in M/M/1/K and estimation based on M/M/1.

• Some useful summation formulae
• DTMC exercises (27-9-2006)
  • Text
• CTMC exercises (11-10-2006)
  • Text
• Additional DTMC and CTMC exercises (8-11-2006)
  • Text
• Single station queueing systems (21-11-2006)
  • Text
• Queueing networks (12-12-2006)
  • Text
• Some past year exams
  • January 16, 2006 (the text contains also some solution hints)
  • June 6, 2006: this will be solved in class next Wednesday (Dec. 20, 2006)
  • September 04, 2006 (text only)

• PDF

Meeting me

The most obvious place to query, ask for clarifications, rise doubts and so on is the class, so tath everybody can intervene and be aware of clarifications. Questions can be done in Italian!!
Further minor queries can be done at the end (or before) the lesson.
If additional time is needed for complex queries or long problems send me an e-mail for an appointment. Try to specify the reason in the e-mail, this helps me preparing the answer and helps you formalizing it. Please, avoi dropping-by the office. Normally I cannot receive you on the fly and the only result is a waste of time. I do not set up a formal receiving hour: you can come at any time, just take an appointment.
If you have small quick doubts I can also try to solve them via e-mail, so that you don't need to come to my office for a 30 second answer!