Arnold Oral Allen (died 2004) was an American instructor, public speaker, and writer who worked at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, and specialized in the analysis and

mathematical modelling A mathematical model is an abstract description of a concrete system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed ''mathematical modeling''. Mathematical models are used in applied mathemati ...

computer performance In computing, computer performance is the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system. Outside of specific contexts, computer performance is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing computer program instruction ...

Biography

Allen earned a Ph.D. in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

in 1962 under Angus Taylor with a dissertation entitled ''Banach and Hilbert Spaces of Analytic Functions'', where he later lectured. At IBM, he taught at the Information Systems Management Institute in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. Later, at Hewlett-Packard, he was a member of the Performance Technology Center, then a researcher at the Advanced Technology Group in

Roseville, California Roseville is the most populous city in Placer County, California, located within the Sacramento metropolitan area. As of 2019, the United States Census Bureau, US Census Bureau estimated the city's population to be 141,500, making it the third-l ...

. Allen was elected as a director of the

Computer Measurement Group The Computer Measurement Group (CMG), founded in 1974, is a worldwide non-profit organization of data processing professionals whose work involves measuring and managing the performance of computing systems. In this context, ''performance'' is un ...

(CMG), and selected to be the keynote speaker at two international conferences. He was an invited speaker at the ''Sixth International Conference on Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation'', held in

Edinburgh, Scotland Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

in September 1992. In 1994, he received the Computer Measurement group's A. A. Michelson award for technical excellence and professional contributions as a teacher and inspirer of others.

Work

Allen is most well known as the author of the book, ''Probability, Statistics, and Queueing Theory with Computer Science Applications''. Originally published in 1978, and still in print in 2007, it is widely used as a university textbook, by practitioners of computer performance analysis, and by those wishing to apply

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

and

queueing theory Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because th ...

techniques to solve problems in other fields, such as

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

management science Management science (or managerial science) is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is ...

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

, and

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

. At IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Allen's students were typically

systems engineer Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinkin ...

s and project managers, not computer scientists. He encouraged them to improve upon the informal approaches to computer performance analysis that were (and still are) in common use, applying more

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematics, mathematically rigorous techniques for the formal specification, specification, development, Program analysis, analysis, and formal verification, verification of software and computer hardware, ...

and using mathematical models to predict how the performance of a computer system would behave as workloads increased. He began his 1994 book, Computer Performance Analysis with Mathematica, with this observation: He concluded the book by quoting

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man". Allen commented, ''"I hope the reader fits Shaw's definition of unreasonable, and wants to change things for the better"''.

Publications

*1978. ''Probability, statistics, and queueing theory : with computer science applications'' *1994. ''Introduction to computer performance analysis with Mathematica''. *1996. ''Mathematica CD-ROM library''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Arnold People in information technology American operations researchers University of California, Los Angeles alumni