Course syllabus
Utvärdering av programvarusystem
Evaluation of Software Systems
EDAA35, 7 credits, G1 (First Cycle)
Valid for: 2015/16
Decided by: Education Board A
Date of Decision: 2015-04-10
General Information
Main field: Technology.
Compulsory for: D1
Language of instruction: The course will be given in Swedish
Aim
The aim of the course is to provide an understanding for how
scientific studies are conducted, and give knowledge about
scientific writing and oral presentations of scientific work. More
specifically, the course is about software systems can be
evaluated, and how this type of evaluations should be planned,
executed, and reported.
Learning outcomes
Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must
- be able to explain the typical steps of a scientific study,
such as planning and design, execution and data collection, data
analysis, validity evaluation, and formulation of conclusions.
- be able to explain how a runtime system works with respect to
compilation, interpretation, garbage collection, etc.
- be able to explain how measurements are conducted on software
systems, and have knowledge about dynamic and static metrics that
can be defined for quality attributes, mainly with respect to
performance and static metrics.
- be able to explain how measurements are conducted on stochastic
processes and have knowledge about statistics such as mean and
variance.
Competences and skills
For a passing grade the student must
- be able to plan and execute a study which involves measurements
on software systems.
- be able to carry out execution time measurements for software
that is executed with a modern virtual machine. This includes
understanding the difference between startup and steady-state
execution time.
- be able to carry out measurement of static code metrics.
- be able to analyze metrics in order to decide mean value,
confidence intervals, etc, and to be able to interpret these
statistics.
- be able to analyze conducted studies and decide if observed
differences are statistically signifiant
- be able to report this type of studies in written reports. This
includes that the student should be able to refer to work of others
in a correct way.
- be able to evaluate the quality of a written report that
presents the results of an evaluation of a software system
- be able to present this type of study orally.
Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must
- understand how the design of a study affects the validity
- understand which parts of a report that are required in order
to give the reader an unedrstanding of the execution, results,
validity etc.
- understand the importance of statistical data analysis before
the students studies statistical theory in future courses.
Contents
- planning and design of scientific studies
- written and oral presentation of scientific studies
- introduction to statistical analysis, including mean value and
variation
- runtime systems, virtual machines
- measurement of dynamic properties, e.g. execution time in
Java
- measurement and definition of static metrics
- descriptive statistics of measurement data and hypothesis
tests
- basic statistics with tool support
- report structure and language in scientific reports
- Latex, bibtex
- evaluation of scientific studies, review of reports
Examination details
Grading scale: UG
Assessment: Assessment is based on submitted written reports, and oral presentations
Admission
Admission requirements:
- Approved laboratories or written exam in EDA016
Required prior knowledge: Relevant parts of Programming second course, relevant parts of Linear algebra
The number of participants is limited to: No
Reading list
- Bo Renberg: Bra skrivet Väl talat, Handledning i skrivande och praktisk retorik. Studentlitteratur, 2013.
- Articles and other material presented by the department.
Contact and other information
Course coordinator: Martin Höst, Martin.Host@cs.lth.se