Memorias de investigación
Communications at congresses:
Using Differences among Replications of Software Engineering Experiments to Gain Knowledge
Year:2009

Research Areas
  • Artificial intelligence,
  • Programming language

Information
Abstract
In no science or engineering discipline does it make sense to speak of isolated experiments. The resul ts of a single experiment cannot be viewed as representative of the underlying reality. The concept of experiment is closely related to replication. Experiment replication is the repetition of an experiment to double-check its results. Multiple replications of an experiment increase the credibility of its results. Software engineering has tried its hand at the identical repetition of experiments in the way of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.). After numerous attempts over the years, excepting experiments repeated by the same researchers at the same site, no exact replications have yet been achieved. One key reason for this is the complexity of the software development setting. This complexity prevents the many experimental conditions from being reproduced identically. This paper reports research into whether non-exact replications can be of any use. We propose a process that allows researchers to generate new knowledge when running non-exact replications. To illustrate the advantages of the proposed process, two different replications of an experiment are shown.
International
Si
Congress
International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
960
Place
Orlando, Florida
Reviewers
Si
ISBN/ISSN
978-1-4244-4842-5
Start Date
15/10/2009
End Date
16/10/2009
From page
356
To page
366
Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Participants

Research Group, Departaments and Institutes related
  • Creador: Grupo de Investigación: Ingeniería del Software
  • Departamento: Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos e Ingeniería de Software