What is Stewart's Example? This is actually a law of quadratic reliability, and it refers to writing network code and why it is so difficult. Most software has bugs in it, whether these bugs are usually noticed by users or not, and Stewart's Example uses a computer game as a reference. If you write a program that has a bug which causes an error and computer crash every ten hours, most game players will not ever see or notice the bug, because they do not stay playing for ten hours straight, so only a few users are affected.

The problem multiplies when the number of players increase, and if you have ten users on ten networked computers playing the game the odds of a crash increase significantly. The risk of the game crashing would be ten times higher, because ten copies of the game are being played. According to Stewart's Example, the game would only play for an hour before it would crash. Because of this, the bug would be considered one hundred times more serious. This is because the bug is ten times more likely to occur, and when it does it will affect ten times the number of players.

What Does Stewart's Example Show?

The law of quadratic reliability states that the requirement for reliability with a multi player game increases proportionally to the number of players squared. Multi player games are usually longer and more involved than single player games, and this means an increased chance of the bug happening. You also can not usually save multi player games, so when a crash occurs it can be devastating to the player. It is harder to create a network game without bugs, but it is much more important that this happens because of the number of people affected in multi player games.

There are steps that you can take to prevent bugs from crashing your system, and eliminating error messages on your computer. These will also improve the speed and performance of your PC, and increase your system stability. Install an anti virus program, keep the definitions current with updates, and scan your system regularly. The same is true for an anti spyware program, and these two steps will provide a good deal of security for your PC and prevent risky and annoying crashes. Only open one window or application at a time. Remember Stewart's example when writing programs.

Cleaning the registry of your system will prevent many bugs and errors from happening and improve the odds in Stewart's example. The registry contains critical entries for your operating system and all installed programs, so great care must be used that the wrong key or entry is not altered or deleted. If this occurs, you can crash your system and it may not even boot up or start. A method which is much safer than manual editing is to use a registry cleaner. With this software there is no risk of errors in the editing process or of system instability occurring. When the registry is clean, errors and system crashes are no longer a problem. Your computer will also run faster and perform more efficiently. It is important to understand Stewart's example if you are more than just a casual PC user.