A figure of merit (FOM) is a performance metric that characterizes the performance of a device, system, or method, relative to its alternatives.
Examples
- Absolute alcohol content per currency unit in an alcoholic beverage
- Accuracy of a rifle3
- Audio amplifier figures of merit such as gain or efficiency
- Battery life of a laptop computer4
- Calories per serving
- Clock rate of a CPU is often given as a figure of merit, but is of limited use in comparing between different architectures. FLOPS may be a better figure, though these too are not completely representative of the performance of a CPU.
- Contrast ratio of an LCD
- Frequency response of a speaker
- Fill factor of a solar cell
- Resolution of the image sensor in a digital camera
- Measure of the detection performance of a sonar system, defined as the propagation loss for which a 50% detection probability is achieved
- Noise figure of a radio receiver
- The thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, a material constant proportional to the efficiency of a thermoelectric couple made with the material
- The figure of merit of digital-to-analog converter, calculated as (power dissipation)/(2ENOB × effective bandwidth) [J/Hz]
- Luminous efficacy of lighting
- Profit of a company
- Residual noise remaining after compensation in an aeromagnetic survey
- Heat absorption and transfer quality for a solar cooker
Computational benchmarks are synthetic figures of merit that summarize the speed of algorithms or computers in performing various typical tasks.
References
Olivieri, Alejandro C.; Escandar, Graciela M. (2014), "Analytical Figures of Merit", Practical Three-Way Calibration, Elsevier, pp. 93–107, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-410408-2.00006-5, ISBN 978-0-12-410408-2, retrieved 2022-03-24 978-0-12-410408-2 ↩
Allegrini, Franco; Olivieri, Alejandro C. (2020), "Figures of Merit", Comprehensive Chemometrics, Elsevier, pp. 441–463, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-409547-2.14612-8, ISBN 978-0-444-64166-3, S2CID 193125279, retrieved 2022-03-24 978-0-444-64166-3 ↩
Minshall, David. "Measuring Accuracy". Research Press. Retrieved 2023-02-12. http://www.researchpress.co.uk/index.php/firearms/british-military-longarms/small-arms-trials/measuring-accuracy ↩
Decoding Battery Life For Laptops New York Times, June 25, 2009 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/technology/personaltech/25pogue.html ↩