Aggregating empirical evidence for more trustworthy decisions

D. Budgen    Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom

Abstract

We all make rational decisions that are based upon evidence, don't we? After all, the last time we ate a pepperoni pizza for supper we had bad dreams, so that's clearly good evidence that in the future we should avoid eating pepperoni after 6 pm! Except, of course, that it obviously isn't good evidence. What else did we eat that evening, and did the dreams occur because of something entirely different? Yet, in everyday life much of our “evidence” is rather like that, anecdotal in nature, far from objective, and likely to be rather selective. This chapter examines how systematically-gathered software engineering evidence ...

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