I realize that latly we are looking for the slightest "glitch" to post as possible proof. It just seems that there are a lot of computer errors these days, the question is :

Percentage wise, have we always had this amount of computer failures in the world or has there been a sizable increase since the roll over.

Has anybody made up a graph yet?

I would do this myself but im not allowed to talk about Y2K anymore;)

Have a nice day

-- Voynik (voynik@aol.com), January 07, 2000

Answers

Response to Is there a differance?

I found this method of calculating Y2k risk a long time ago. Perhaps it helps for statistics:

The actual rate of residual failure depends on a number of factors, but mostly on the size of the system and the scope of the changes. Under average conditions, modest changes to a moderately sized system, the rate would be about 7%. The scope of Y2K changes is, of course, much more extensive than this and many of the systems are extremely large, so the residual failure rate is also likely to be higher. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us again assume an overly optimistic residual failure rate of only 5% for Y2K related changes. But this is only for one system. For a business with multiple systems (which they all have) the chance of a system failure can be computed as:1-(1-f)n, where "f" is the failure rate and "n" is the number of systems.

An average small business would have perhaps 5 systems so, assuming a residual rate of 5%, they have about a 23% chance of at least one system failure [ 1- (1-.05)5 = 0.226 ]. A medium size business would typically have about 25 systems and, therefore, a 72% chance of a failure [ 1-(1-.05)25 = 0.723 ]. A large business with 100 or more systems would have a 99% chance of a failure [ 1-(1-.05)100 = 0.994 ]. This is EVEN IF ALL OF THE SYSTEMS ARE FIXED! Of course, many of these failures will be relatively easy to fix, but others will require an effort beyond the capabilities of the business and they will not be fixed before the business itself fails (this is particularly true for small and medium businesses using packaged software). In addition, the great majority of these failures will have at least some domino effect on related customers and vendors. To make it even worse, virtually everybody will be facing these problems at about the same time, leading to a chaos in which actually fixing the problems becomes almost impossible.

-- hzlz (mph@netbox.org), January 07, 2000.

Response to Is there a differance?

What would be interesting is to know the actual residual failure rate increase since the roll over.

Interesting answer :)

-- voynik (voynik@aol.com), January 07, 2000.

I did the calculations based on a 7% failure:

failure rate (%) value 7,00% 7,00% 7,00% 7,00% number of systems value 5 25 50 75 Chance of failure 30,431% 83,704% 97,344% 99,567%

I do not have a clue about the current failure rates ... perhaps later

-- hzlz (mph@netbox.org), January 07, 2000.