COGNOiSe.com - The IBM Cognos Community

IBM Cognos 8 Platform => COGNOS 8 => Metrics Studio => Topic started by: david.stachon on 04 Dec 2008 05:48:32 PM

Title: Best Way to handle a "Zero" Target
Post by: david.stachon on 04 Dec 2008 05:48:32 PM
I have a KPI in which the performance is based on 0 occurrences of something...

As an example, hypothetically, say it's for an Air Traffic Controller and his KPI is "Plane Crashes"

...seems reasonable enough that he should have a green light for every period that goes by without him causing a plane crash; however, if even 1 (absolute) plane crash occurs, it should go to red.

..now, the problem setting "Target" to "0" is Metric Studio can't calculate score (i.e. division by zero).

So, what I've done, is set the Target to: 0.00001

In terms of the lights, this works okay...the problem is the variance calculations are pretty nasty looking. I could hide the variance column; however, there are other KPIs on the scorecard where they would like to see that column.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed

cheers,
david.
Title: Re: Best Way to handle a "Zero" Target
Post by: DustPanMan on 05 Dec 2008 02:24:35 PM
David,

I would recommend setting it to zero and using an alternate display for when division by zero occurs for your score.  Obviously, dividing by .0000001 will give extremely large calcualtion scores as well.

Best regards,

Dustin
Title: Re: Best Way to handle a "Zero" Target
Post by: JoeBoxer on 28 Dec 2008 12:00:57 PM
Quote from: david.stachon on 04 Dec 2008 05:48:32 PM
I have a KPI in which the performance is based on 0 occurrences of something...

on target is positive, target = 0

As an example, hypothetically, say it's for an Air Traffic Controller and his KPI is "Plane Crashes"

...seems reasonable enough that he should have a green light for every period that goes by without him causing a plane crash; however, if even 1 (absolute) plane crash occurs, it should go to red.

Target and Tolerance set to 0

..now, the problem setting "Target" to "0" is Metric Studio can't calculate score (i.e. division by zero).

Not true with the Cognos 8.3 that I just tested.  Was able to handle it beautifully

So, what I've done, is set the Target to: 0.00001

In terms of the lights, this works okay...the problem is the variance calculations are pretty nasty looking. I could hide the variance column; however, there are other KPIs on the scorecard where they would like to see that column.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcomed

cheers,
david.

See below screenshot