Don’t embarrass yourself

Beware of bias in your data

C. Bird    Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, United States

Abstract

Bias may exist in data that you collect for quantitative analysis in software engineering research. Some forms of bias can negatively affect the validity of analysis, results, and conclusions. In this chapter, I discuss forms of bias, how to test for them, and in some cases how to address them.

Keywords

Bias; Features of defects; Population distribution; Sample distribution; Histogram

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