Task backlog waiting times are power laws

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Once it has been agreed to implement new functionality, how long do the associated tasks have to wait in the to-do queue?

An analysis of the SiP task data finds that waiting time has a power law distribution, i.e., numTasks approx waitingTime^{-1}, where numTasks is the number of tasks waiting a given amount of time; the LSST:DM Sprint/Story-point/Story has the same distribution. Is this a coincidence, or does task waiting time always have this form?

Queueing theory analyses the properties of systems involving the arrival of tasks, one or more queues, and limited implementation resources.

A basic result of queueing theory is that task waiting time has an exponential distribution, i.e., not a power law. What software task implementation behavior is sufficiently different from basic queueing theory to cause its waiting time to have a power law?

As always, my first line of attack was to find data from other domains, hopefully with an accompanying analysis modelling the behavior. It’s possible that my two samples are just way outside the norm.

Eventually I found an analysis of the letter writing response time of Darwin, Einstein and Freud (my email asking for the data has not yet received a reply). Somebody writes to a famous scientist (the scientist has to be famous enough for people to want to create a collection of their papers and letters), the scientist decides to add this letter to the pile (i.e., queue) of letters to reply to, eventually a reply is written. What is the distribution of waiting times for replies? Yes, it’s a power law, but with an exponent of -1.5, rather than -1.

The change made to the basic queueing model is to assign priorities to tasks, and then choose the task with the highest priority (rather than a random task, or the one that has been waiting the longest). Provided the queue never becomes empty (i.e., there are always waiting tasks), the waiting time is a power law with exponent -1.5; this behavior is independent of queue length and distribution of priorities (simulations confirm this behavior).

However, the exponent for my software data, and other data, is not -1.5, it is -1. A 2008 paper by Albert-László Barabási ( detailed analysis)showed how a modification to the task selection process produces the desired exponent of -1. Each of the tasks currently in the queue is assigned a probability of selection, this probability is proportional to the priority of the corresponding task (i.e., the sum of the priorities/probabilities of all the tasks in the queue is assumed to be constant); task selection is weighted by this probability.

So we have a queueing model whose task waiting time is a power law with an exponent of -1. How well does this model map to software task selection behavior?

One apparent difference between the queueing model and waiting software tasks is that software tasks are assigned to a small number of priorities (e.g., Critical, Major, Minor), while each task in the model queue has a unique priority (otherwise a tie-break rule would have to be specified). In practice, I think that the developers involved do assign unique priorities to tasks.

Why wouldn’t a developer simply select what they consider to be the highest priority task to work on next?

Perhaps each developer does select what they consider to be the highest priority task, but different developers have different opinions about which task has the highest priority. The priority assigned to a task by different developers will have some probability distribution. If task priority assignment by developers is correlated, then the behavior is effectively the same as the queueing model, i.e., the probability component is supplied by different developers having different opinions and the correlation provides a clustering of priorities assigned to each task (i.e., not a uniform distribution).

If this mapping is correct, the task waiting time for a system implemented by one developer should have a power law exponent of -1.5, just like letter writing data.

The number of sprints that a story is assigned to, before being completely implemented, is a power law whose exponent varies around -3. An explanation of this behavior based on priority queues looks possible; we shall see…

The queueing models discussed above are a subset of the field known as bursty dynamics; see the review paper Bursty Human Dynamics for human behavior related aspects.

Where are we with models of human learning?

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

Learning is an integral part of writing software. What have psychologists figured out about the characteristics of human learning?

A study of memory, published in 1885, kicked off the start of modern psychology research. At the start of the 1900s, learning research was still closely tied to the study of the characteristics of what we now call working memory, e.g., measuring the time taken for subjects to correctly recall sequences of digits, nonsense syllables, words and prose. By the 1930s, learning was a distinct subject in its own right.

What is now known as the power law of learning was first proposed in 1926. Wikipedia is right to use the phrase power law of practice, since it is some measure of practice that appears in the power law of learning equation: T=a+b*P^{-c}, where: T is the time taken to do the task,P is some measure of practice (such as the number of times the subject has performed the task), and a, b, and c are constants fitted to the data.

For the next 70 years some form of power law did a good job of fitting the learning data produced by researchers. Then in 1997 a paper pointed out that researchers were fitting aggregate data (i.e., one equation fitted to all subject data), and that an exponential equation was a better fit to individual subject response times: T=a+b*e^{-cP}. The power law appeared to be the result of aggregating the exponential response performance of multiple subjects; oops.

What is the situation today, 25 years later? Do the subsystems of our brains produce a power law or exponential improvement in performance, with practice?

The problem with answering this question is that both equations can fit the available data quite well, with one being a technically better fit than the other for different datasets. The big difference between the two equations is in their tails, however, it is costly and time-consuming to obtain enough data to distinguish between them in this region.

When discussing learning in my evidence-based software engineering book, I saw no compelling reason to run counter to the widely cited power law, but I did tell readers about the exponential fit issue.

Studies of learnings have tended to use simple tasks; subjects are usually only available for a short time, and many task repetitions are needed to model the impact of learning. Simple tasks tend to be dominated by one primary activity, which means that subjects can focus their learning on this one activity.

Complicated tasks involve many activities, each potentially providing distinct learning opportunities. Which activities will a subject focus on improving, will the performance on one activity improve faster than others, will the approach chosen for one activity limit the performance on a second activity?

For a complicated task, the change in performance with amount of practice could be a lot more complicated than a single power law/exponential equation, e.g., there may be multiple equations with each associated with one or more activities.

In the previous paragraph, I was careful to say “could be a lot more complicated”. This is because the few datasets of organizational learning show a power law performance improvement, e.g., from 1936 we have the most cited study Factors Affecting the Cost of Airplanes, and the less well known but more interesting Liberty shipbuilding from the 1940s.

If the performance of something involving multiple people performing many distinct activities follows a power law improvement with practice, then the performance of an individual carrying out a complicated task might follow a simple equation; perhaps the combined form of many distinct simple learning activities is a simple equation.

Researchers are now proposing more complicated models of learning, along with fitting them to existing learning datasets.

Which equation should software developers use to model the learning process?

I continue to use a power law. The mathematics tend to be straight-forward, and it often gives an answer that is good enough (because the data fitted contains lots of variance). If it turned out that an exponential would be easier to work with, I would be happy to switch. Unless there is a lot of data in the tail, the difference between power law/exponent is usually not worth worrying about.

There are situations where I have failed to successfully add a learning (power law) component to a model. Was this because there was no learning present, or was the learning not well-fitted by a power law? I don’t know, and I cannot think of an alternative equation that might work, for these cases.

for-loop usage at different nesting levels

Derek Jones from The Shape of Code

When reading code, starting at the first line of a function/method, the probability of the next statement read being a for-loop is around 1.5% (at least in C, I don’t have decent data on other languages). Let’s say you have been reading the code a line at a time, and you are now reading lines nested within various if/while/for statements, you are at nesting depth d. What is the probability of the statement on the next line being a for-loop?

Does the probability of encountering a for-loop remain unchanged with nesting depth (i.e., developer habits are not affected by nesting depth), or does it decrease (aren’t developers supposed to using functions/methods rather than nesting; I have never heard anybody suggest that it increases)?

If you think the for-loop use probability is not affected by nesting depth, you are going to argue for the plot on the left (below, showing number of loops appearing in C source at various nesting depths), with the regression model fitting really well after 3-levels of nesting. If you think the probability decreases with nesting depth, you are likely to argue for the plot on the right, with the model fitting really well down to around 10-levels of nesting (code+data).

Number of C source lines containing a given number of characters.

Both plots use the same data, but different scales are used for the x-axis.

If probability of use is independent of nesting depth, an exponential equation should fit the data (i.e., the left plot), decreasing probability is supported by a power-law (i.e, the right plot; plus other forms of equation, but let’s keep things simple).

The two cases are very wrong over different ranges of the data. What is your explanation for reality failing to follow your beliefs in for-loop occurrence probability?

Is the mismatch between belief and reality caused by the small size of the data set (a few million lines were measured, which was once considered to be a lot), or perhaps your beliefs are based on other languages which will behave as claimed (appropriate measurements on other languages most welcome).

The nesting depth dependent use probability plot shows a sudden change in the rate of decrease in for-loop probability; perhaps this is caused by the maximum number of characters that can appear on a typical editor line (within a window). The left plot (below) shows the number of lines (of C source) containing a given number of characters; the right plot counts tokens per line and the length effect is much less pronounced (perhaps developers use shorter identifiers in nested code). Note: different scales used for the x-axis (code+data).

Number of lines containing a given number of C tokens.

I don’t have any believable ideas for why the exponential fit only works if the first few nesting depths are ignored. What could be so special about early nesting depths?

What about fitting the data with other equations?

A bi-exponential springs to mind, with one exponential driven by application requirements and the other by algorithm selection; but reality is not on-board with this idea.

Ideas, suggestions, and data for other languages, most welcome.