Category: My research
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Software defect costs
In my persuit of software engineering data, I’ve recently been poring over a 2002 report to the US Government on the annual costs of software defects. The report is entitled “The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing“. Ultimately, it estimates that software defects cost the US economy $59.5 billion every year. Modelling such…
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The colloquium
An “official communication” from early June demanded that all Engineering and Computing postgraduate students take part in the Curtin Engineering & Computing Research Colloquium. Those who didn’t might be placed on “conditional status”, the message warned. A slightly rebellious instinct led me to think of ways to obey the letter but not the spirit of…
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Meta-engineering
I’m beginning to think I should have approached this maths modelling stuff from an engineering point of view: with a requirements document, version control and unit testing. Constructing a reasonably complicated mathematical model seems to have enough in common with software development that such things could be quite useful. I’m calling this “meta-engineering”, because I’d…
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What am I doing?
Over the past few weeks I’ve had numerous questions of the form: “how’s your work going?” I find I can only ever answer this with banalities like “good” or “meh”. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing. At any given point in time, I have a list of minor challenges written up on…
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Artificial intelligence
A thought occurs, spurred on by my use of Bayesian networks. They’re used in AI (so I’m led to believe), though I’m using them to model the comprehension process in humans. However, I do also work in a building filled with other people applying AI techniques. My question is this: how long until Sarah Connor…
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The Bayesian rabbit hole
You may recall previous rants about my theoretical framework. The recent evolution of my thought processes (much like all other times) has been something like this: hurrah, done… except… [ponder]… I should see if I can fix this little problem… [ponder]… How the hell is this supposed to work?… [ponder]… Damn, the library doesn’t have…
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The Zim desktop wiki
I’ve discovered that Zim is a great little brainstorming tool, for me at least. While I occasionally “think in images”, my brain usually works on words and symbols. A wiki – especially one that sports a LaTeX equation editor – seems to be a powerful way to assist a text-based brainstorming session. Being a desktop…
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Theoretical frameworks, part 3
The [intlink id=”225″ type=”post”]first[/intlink] and [intlink id=”324″ type=”post”]second[/intlink] instalments of this saga discussed the thinking and writing processes. However, I also need to fess up to reality and do some measuring. A theoretical framework is not a theory. The point of a theoretical framework is to frame theories – to provide all the concepts and…
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Theoretical frameworks, part 2
Carrying on from my [intlink id=”225″ type=”post”]last research-related rant[/intlink], my other problem of late lies in the writing process. The framework is supposed to assist the detection of defects in software, in a very round-about fashion. Why is this important? Well, hands up who hasn’t lost work as a result of software screwing up. Some…
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Theoretical frameworks
One of the chapters of my much-delayed thesis describes (or rather will describe) a theoretical framework, which is academic-speak for “a way of understanding stuff” in a given field. In my case, stuff = software inspections, and my way of understanding them is a mixture of abstractions of abstractions of abstractions and some slightly crazy…