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

 * 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)/(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.