CS 68191 Masters Seminar / CS 89191 Doctoral Seminar
Spring 2008


Weyuker's Properties Versus Measurement in the Physical Science

Kehinde Jolayemi
(Masters Student Presentation)



Weyuker proposed nine properties which any software complexity measure should satisfy. She then discovered that none of the measures satisfied all of her properties. Therefore, there are several ways of approaching Weyuker's Properties. One may pay close attention to creating a new metric that will satisfy all of her properties or one may dwell on finding a solid foundation for Weyuker's properties or one may concentrate on relating Weyuker's properties with measurement theory. This thesis will focus more on comparing Weyuker's properties with Campbell's Measurement theory.

I look at the foundation for measurement theory and ask whether software measurement is measurement in the sense of measurement in the physical sciences. I focus my measurement theory ideas on Campbell. My discussion about measurement theory originated from the following article: The Application of the theory of Physical Measurement to the Measurement of Psychological Magnitude with three experiments by Thomas Reese. Resse was driven to write this article to discuss the fact that there were properties that were satisfied in measurement in the physical science but they were not satisfied in measurement in psychology. If properties of software measurement are not satisfied in measurement in the physical science, then one might to define a different foundation for software measurement.

In this thesis, in addition to looking at Campbell's measurement theory, I also look at Weyuker's properties and compare them with Campbell's measurement theory. My presentation of Weyuker's properties comes from the article "Evaluation of Software Metrics". The Motivation for Weyuker's article [2] was to discuss the strengths and weakness of various software metrics and to define a foundation for software measurement.