Calculate time remaining with different length of variables - time

Question

I will have to admit the title of this question sucks... I couldn't get the best description out. Let me see if I can give an example.
I have about 2700 customers with my software at one time was installed on their server. 1500 or so still do. Basically what I have going on is an Auto Diagnostics to help weed out people who have uninstalled or who have problems with the software for us to assist with. Currently we have a cURL fetching their website for our software and looking for a header return.
We have 8 different statuses that are returned
GREEN - Everything works (usually pretty quick 0.5 - 2 seconds)
RED - Software not found (usually the longest from 5 - 15 seconds)
BLUE - Software found but not activated (usually from 3 - 9 seconds)
YELLOW - Server IP mismatch (usually from 1 - 3 seconds)
ORANGE - Server IP mismatch and wrong software type (usually 5 - 10 seconds)
PURPLE - Activation key incorrect (usually within 2 seconds)
BLACK - Domain returns 404 - No longer exists (usually within a second)
UNK - Connection failed (usually due to our load balancer -- VERY rare) (never countered this yet)
Now basically what happens is a cronJob will start the process by pulling the domain and product type. It will then cURL the domain and start cycling through the status colors above.
While this is happening we have an ajax page that is returning the results so we can keep an eye on the status. The major problem is the Time Remaining is so volatile that it does not do a good estimate. Here is the current math:
# Number of accounts between NOW and when started
$completedAccounts = floor($parseData[2]*($parseData[1]/100));
# Number of seconds between NOW and when started
$completedTime = strtotime("now") - strtotime("$hour:$minute:$second");
# Avg number of seconds per account
$avgPerCompleted = $completedTime / $completedAccounts;
# Total number of remaining accounts to be scanned
$remainingAccounts = $parseData[2] - $completedAccounts;
# The total of seconds remaining for all of the remaining accounts
$remainingSeconds = $remainingAccounts * $avgPerCompleted;
$remainingTime = format_time($remainingSeconds, ":");
I could create a count on all of the green, red, blue, etc... and do an average of how long each color does, then use that for the average time, although I don't believe that would give much better results.
With the difference in times that are so varied, any suggestions would be grateful?
Thanks,
Jeff

Answer 1

OK, I believe I have figured it out. I had to create a class so I could calculate a single regression over a period of time.
function calc() {
$n = count($this->mDatas);
$vSumXX = $vSumXY = $vSumX = $vSumY = 0;
//var_dump($this->mDatas);
$vCnt = 0; // for time-series, start at t=0<br />
foreach ($this->mDatas AS $vOne) {
if (is_array($vOne)) { // x,y pair<br />
list($x,$y) = $vOne;
} else { // time-series<br />
$x = $vCnt; $y = $vOne;
} // fi</p>
$vSumXY += $x*$y;
$vSumXX += $x*$x;
$vSumX += $x;
$vSumY += $y;
$vCnt++;
} // rof
$vTop = ($n*$vSumXY – $vSumX*$vSumY);
$vBottom = ($n*$vSumXX – $vSumX*$vSumX);
$a = $vBottom!=0?$vTop/$vBottom:0;
$b = ($vSumY – $a*$vSumX)/$n;
//var_dump($a,$b);
return array($a,$b);
}
I take each account and start building an array, for the amount of time it takes for each one. The array then runs through this calculation so it will build a x and y time sets. Finally I then run the array through the predict function.
/** given x, return the prediction y */
function calcpredict($x) {
list($a,$b) = $this->calc();
$y = $a*$x+$b;
return $y;
}
I put static values in so you could see the results:
$eachTime = array(7,1,.5,12,11,6,3,.24,.12,.28,2,1,14,8,4,1,.15,1,12,3,8,4,5,8,.3,.2,.4,.6,4,5);
$forecastProcess = new Linear($eachTime);
$forecastTime = $forecastProcess->calcpredict(5);
This overall system gives me about a .003 difference in 10 accounts and about 2.6 difference in 2700 accounts. Next will be to calculate the Accuracy.
Thanks for trying guys and gals