Figure of merit

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 rifle
• Audio amplifier figures of merit such as gain or efficiency
• Battery life of a laptop computer
• 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)/(2^ENOB × 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.