When Good Models Meet Bad Data: Applying Quantitative Economic Models
to Qualitative Engineering Judgments
Authors: Shawn Butler, Somesh Jha, and Mary Shaw
Position paper for the Second Workshop on Economics-Driven Software
Engineering Research (EDSER-2), affiliated with the 22nd International
Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2000).
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Abstract
We have been attempting to apply financial portfolio analysis
techniques to the task of selecting an application-appropriate suite
of security technologies from the technologies available in the
marketplace. The problem structures are sufficiently similar that the
intuitive guidance is encouraging. However, the analysis techniques
of portfolio analysis assume precise quantitative data of a sort that
we cannot realistically expect to obtain for the security
applications. This will be a common challenge in applying
quantitative economic models to software engineering problems, and we
consider ways to address the mismatch.
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