General information;

The program syllabus and course goals can be found on ESSE3.

"Performance Evaluation" is the science (art??) of analysing and predicting the quantitative behavior of systems, complex systems in particular, where the system output is non linear and very difficult to predict.

The course is methodologic, with heavvy use of mathematical tools that we introduce and describe in class. The goal if providing the student with the conceptual and theoric tools to undestand and tackle the typical problems that are faced when studying and designing complex systems loaded by an external workload.

Systems to be studied are described as stochastic processes, and the outcomes are average and tail (percentiles) behaviors, loss probabilities, delays, etc. The background needed to understand the course are simple analysis and a good knowledge of probability theory together with elementary notions of statistcs.

The systems that can be studied with these techniques range from computer and operating systems (the area where the whole theory was first developed), to telephone (Erlang was a scientist with the Copenhagen Telephone Company) and computer networks, to biological and chemical systems.

Additional information can be found in the detailed pages of each academic year.