Benchmarking flaws

Published in 04 13, 2022

This doc is about the benchmarking crimes.

When reviewing systems papers (and sometimes even when reading published papers) I frequently come across highly misleading use of benchmarks. I’m not saying that the authors intend to mislead the reader, it’s just as likely incompetence

Benchmarking crimes include:

  • Selective benchmarking
  • Improper handling of benchmark results
  • Using the wrong benchmarks
  • Improper comparison of benchmark results
  • Missing information

Read & Download doc here

Reference: van der Kouwe, Erik, et al. “Benchmarking crimes: an emerging threat in systems security.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.02381 (2018).